


After All These Years

by DJClawson



Series: Acts of Deliberate Intent [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adoption, Airbending & Airbenders, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bending (Avatar), Black Sky, Catholicism, Divorce, Drug Addiction, Earthbending & Earthbenders, F/M, Fake Marriage, Gen, Jewish Marci, Judaism, Lion Turtles, M/M, Real Marriage, Spanish Dialogue, The Avengers - Freeform, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-05-13 17:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5711788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of requested follow-ups to my "Blackening Sky" series. Please feel free to read and add your own request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stick

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this as a follow-up fic because I felt I wasn't done exploring Stick and Matt's relationship in the context of the events of this series, and I know it's probably going to be jossed by season 2, so I wanted to get it up before then. Some people have requested to see things down the line in this setting, with Matt and Foggy fake gay married and raising a son, and Matt being an airbender. Yes, I'm working on that fic about Juan learning about his "parents'" marriage and divorce.
> 
> Also, if anyone wants to draw Stick or Matt with airbender tatts, that would be totally awesome, particularly if it was after their hair grew back in. They would both look terrible bald.
> 
> This particular chapter picks up about 2 years after Matt and Foggy adopt Juan at the end of "The Bridge Between Worlds."
> 
> Special thanks to Zelofheda for the beta work and Nahirr for the Spanish translations.

Matt wasn’t surprised to see find Stick draped across his couch, one filthy boot up on the armrest. He’d heard his heartbeat outside the building, known there was only one adult male with a tendency to break into his apartment when he wasn’t there, other occupants be damned. Matt even debated stopping at the bodega and picking up some well vodka before heading upstairs, but he didn’t want to encourage him. “Hi.” Matt stepped over a misplaced wooden train set to get to him. “How are you?”

Stick didn’t so much as pick his head up. He smelled of dirt and sweat, but nothing recent. He’d been wearing these clothes for a while. He also smelled of blood. “I almost tripped on my way in here.”

“No you didn’t,” Matt said.

“I could have.”

Technically, Juan was under very strict instructions about where he could leave his toys (the walkway definitely not being one of those places), but he had been late to soccer practice. “He’s a kid. It happens.” Matt supposed asking where Stick had been and what he was doing here was worthless. Stick was never one to offer answers willingly. But he also hadn’t gotten up when Matt came in. He was slumped on the couch like he was boneless. Matt took better stock of the room. Stick was not actively bleeding, but his back was bandaged, and beneath it was dried blood and pus.

“You need a doctor?”

“I’m not on the grid.”

Matt pulled out his phone. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You can figure it out for yourself.”

Matt didn’t want this to be another test, but Stick was Stick. “Fine.” He set his briefcase aside and pulled up a chair. “The wound in your back is infected.”

“Smells that way.”

“How long?”

“Couple days now.”

“When did you try to stitch it?”

“Last Friday.” So, a week. “I think. Wasn’t my best job.”

Stick’s voice sound odd. Tired. And it wasn’t from age. Matt asked, “Are you sick too?”

“Getting over malaria. Had the drugs. It just takes time.”

“Soldiers get malaria?”

“Sometimes soldiers don’t have time to start their anti-malarial medication a week ahead of travel,” Stick explained. “This isn’t my first go-round. The worst is over.”

“I’m going to take your word for it.” He tapped on his phone to wake it up. “Call Claire.”

“You’re not going to fix it yourself?” Stick said as the phone rang.

“You know what helps with stitches? Vision.” He wasn’t outright rude. Stick was sick and injured. He wouldn’t have come all the way to Matt if he didn’t need help, but he would also never admit it. “Claire?”

“Matt?”

“Hey,” he said. “I’ve got a friend with infected stitches. He needs antibiotics.”

“And does your friend have insurance?”

“Technically, I think he qualifies for Medicare,” Matt said to Stick’s grumble. “But you know how it is. I think I have the rest of the supplies here already.”

“My shift ends in two hours,” she said. “Can it wait?”

“A warrior knows how to wait,” he said, more to Stick than to Claire. “Thanks.” He hung up the phone and went to the kitchen, checking that there wasn’t anything else on the floor that Juan wasn’t going to need a time out for. Stick needed fluids. Matt brought him water first. “Drink it.”

“Is that a sippy cup?”

It was an ordinary glass, and they both knew it. “Juan’s eight. But I can get you his plastic Winnie-the-Pooh cup if you want.”

“You spoil that kid.” But he took the glass, and sat up enough to set it on his chest, holding it with both hands, which seemed shaky to Matt.

“Technically, Foggy bought it. But yeah, I don’t make him sleep on sandpaper. I know that makes me less than an model parent in your eyes, but I’ll live.”

“I thought I might burst in on you guys sitting in a circle singing kumbaya or whatever it is families do.”

“He’s at soccer practice.” But Matt did think it was nice that Stick used the word ‘family.’ “Foggy’s probably getting in a fight with the coach for not playing him enough. It happens a lot.”

“Aren’t you fuckin’ model parents?”

“And there’s the Stick I was waiting for,” Matt said. “I thought you might really be sick.”

“I’ve had worse.” Stick handed him back an empty glass. This time, Matt got him juice. Foggy said the label said it was fresh and organic, but Matt could taste the metal of the machines, and the pesticides that seeped their way into the fruit before it was harvested. But it was the best they could do without moving to Florida and opening an orange grove.

Matt handed him another glass. “Drink.”

“This mimosa is missing something.”

“You have a fever.” He pulled Stick’s boots off, which was not an overwhelmingly pleasant experience, and covered his lower body with a blanket. There was a print on it, but he didn’t know what it was. More tellingly, Stick didn’t fight him over this. “Do you want something to eat?”

“Rum cake. Hold the cake.”

“You’d better not be hoping for an intervention, because I didn’t plan one.”

“You wouldn’t survive it,” Stick replied, which was probably true. He finished the juice but coughed so hard Matt thought he might bring it all back up. His lungs sounded funny, like when Foggy had allergies, but it sounded much too dry.

“I told you, it’s malaria,” Stick said as Matt pressed a hand against Stick’s chest. Well, it didn’t _sound_ like he was lying, and Matt didn’t smell anything else wrong. “And I didn’t ask you to baby me.”

“I didn’t say I was,” Matt replied, knowing better than to fight him on this point. He retreated to his room to change out of his suit (he’d had a Saturday arbitration), and it only took a few minutes for Stick to fall asleep. Or do an excellent job of faking sleep. So. He really needed help, at least temporarily.

Matt went back into his room and shut the door, not that that would help if Stick was going to be roused by noise. It was the principle of the thing. “Call Foggy.”

Foggy picked up after two rings. “Hey, um, I might have gotten Juan benched.”

“You did?”

“They have this policy, and it’s totally stupid, where if one team is too far ahead, they aren’t allowed to try to score so the other team can catch up.”

“That is really stupid.”

“So the referee town told Juan if he went for a goal, he’d get a red card. And I shouted that if he went for the goal, I’d buy him ice cream. Because, you know, what the hell? So long story short, I owe him some ice cream.”

“At least he’s not growing up on mixed messages,” Matt said. “Look, Stick is here, and he’s hurt. Not seriously, but Claire’s coming over in two hours to look at the wound. He might have to stay for a while.” Matt reached out and casually touched the head of the St. Lucy statue on his windowsill, where he could feel the paint wearing down. “Prep Juan.”

“What exactly do you want to tell him? Because most of the things I know about Stick aren’t PG-13. And then there’s the um, thing we don’t talk about.”

“He’ll know what he is,” Matt said. They had a policy not to say the words ‘Black Sky’ anywhere that could be recorded. “Tell him I knew him when I was a kid, and not to listen to anything he says if we’re not around.”

“I’m not leaving him alone with Stick.”

Matt had to smile at that. “Stick knows boundaries. Juan is mine.” He didn’t mention that by the same logic, he belonged to Stick.

“Yeah, um, still not going to do it,” Foggy replied. “Thanks for the heads up.”

As he waited for them, Matt busied himself tidying up the apartment. He didn’t know why – Stick wouldn’t give a shit, would probably laugh at his attempts – but the place was more cramped than the last time Stick was here, with two walls installed for Foggy and Juan’s bedrooms, and a more furnished kitchen area. Foggy had never been the cleanest person, but kids just collected _stuff_ , and having a kid meant you had _stuff_.

Of course, if he had left his room half this messy at St. Agnes, the nuns would have eviscerated him. And he’d been lucky to have his own room.

Foggy must have said something, because Juan didn’t bound in the room full of energy like he normally did. Their entrance was much more quiet, even if he was still a little revved up from the game and sugar. “Hi Dad.”

“Hey.” Matt patted him on the head. “I heard you scored today.”

“Three times!” Juan was trying to keep his voice down. “Is that – “

“Juan,” Matt said much more calmly, hands on his shoulders, “this is Stick. He taught me how to fight when I was a kid. He helped me find you. He’s a very important person to me, but don’t listen to everything he says, all right? He’s had a lot of hard experiences.” And that was compared to Juan, so he knew to take it seriously. “Also, he’s like me.”

“He’s blind?”

Matt nodded. “And he can tell when you lie. So don’t lie to him, okay? If you don’t want to lie, just say that your dad said you don’t have to answer the question.”

“Ha,” Stick said, which caused a little nervous jump from the other people in the room, as he made no other movement. “I heard that.” He pushed himself into a sitting position. It sounded like more of a struggle than it should have been. “Hey kid.”

Stick offered his hand, and Juan took it after looking to Foggy for an approving nod. “Hello, Mr. Stick.”

“ _We missed each other last time_ ,” (No nos encontramos la última vez,) Stick said in Spanish. “ _So, is your dad teaching you how to fight?” (_ Entonces, ¿tu papa te está enseñando a pelear? _)_

“No, he’s not,” Matt cut in, but it at least made Stick laugh. It was good to hear him laugh. “C’mon. Claire’s coming over and you need to get cleaned up.”

“ _I want to learn to airbend!_ ” (¡Quiero aprender aire control!)

“ _When you’re older_ ,” (Cuando seas mayor,)Matt said, which was a promise he might be held to. He pushed Juan into the bathroom and turned on the shower, which didn’t mean he couldn’t hear everything else in the apartment perfectly fine.

“So,” Foggy said apprehensively, “how are you?”

“Been better,” Stick said. Matt couldn’t recall a time Stick and Foggy had ever talked. “Been worse.” He chuckled. Foggy was probably posing. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to steal your kid.”

“I would be a little less concerned if you didn’t have a history of it.”

“St. Agnes contacted _me_ ,” Stick pointed out. “Or they think they did. They thought I could help Matt, and they were right.”

“Juan doesn’t need help.”

“He has potential,” Stick replied. “But no, he’s not like Matt. Matt did a good job on him.”

“You mean, he didn’t blind him.”

“That’s precisely what I mean. I don’t like doing it, either. It’s Izo’s thing. Just because he blinded himself. Now he thinks it’s hot shit.”

“No cursing,” Foggy said. “Not when Juan can hear you.”

Stick cackled with laughter. “Get me some booze and we’ll open negotiations about that.”

“You don’t look like you should be handling anything stronger than water,” Foggy said, and Foggy probably meant it. He did have that one-up on Matt – he could _see_ Stick’s condition. Medicine was at least a little visual. “Are you sure you’re not contagious?”

“Malaria’s not contagious.”

“Where the heck did you get malaria?” Foggy asked. “And yes, I just said heck, we have a kid in the house, so don’t give me that look.”

“I don’t know what ‘that look’ looks like.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Stick coughed, but it was a dry cough. Nothing came up with it. “Kenya. If I knew I was going to be back in New York, I would have brought back a gazelle for you guys.”

That was enough Stick for Foggy to handle for the time being, but it was Stick who came out more drained. When Juan was finished drying up, Matt found Stick asleep again, and he only put up minimal fuss to being moved to Matt’s bed, where there was at least the theory of privacy, as if two out of four people present in the apartment couldn’t hear everything going on anyway, maybe even in their sleep.

“How long is he going to stay here?” Foggy asked. He sounded more concerned than annoyed.

“I don’t know. If it’s too hard on us, I’ll find him room somewhere else. But he usually doesn’t stay long.” He said to Juan, whose comprehension was better than his English speech but still had holes, “ _Be nice to Stick, okay? He’s a guest and he’s sick, but not with anything you can catch. He needs a lot of rest_.” (Se bueno con Stick, ¿si? Es un invitado y está enfermo, pero no de algo que te puedas contagiar. Necesita mucho descanso.)

Juan nodded. “Can I play video games?” Because he was a kid with a one-track mind.

“Yeah, with headphones,” Matt said. It was his day off, technically speaking, which meant Foggy was in charge of Juan, and they usually spent some of the day playing video games together, something Foggy couldn’t share with Matt.

Claire showed up early and got an enthusiastic greeting from Juan, who wrapped his arms around her. “ _Hey, kiddo. What are you up to today?_ ” (Hola, chico. ¿Qué haces hoy?)

“ _I’m beating Uncle Foggy at Call of Duty_.” (Le estoy ganando al tío Foggy en Call of Duty)

“He’s not,” Foggy said.

Matt detected a lie, but he didn’t call Foggy on it. He already had taken out the massive toolbox that served to store medical supplies. “Thanks for coming by.”

“You didn’t give me his medical history, but I snagged some different samples for antibiotics to start general treatment,” she said. “Where’s the patient?”

Matt showed her to his room, and slid the door open to reveal a sleeping Stick. “This is Stick.”

“The guy who beat the crap out of you as a little kid?”

“I heard that,” Stick said. “And yes.”

“You’re supposed to be resting.”

“How am I supposed to rest when I’m sleeping on a fucking marshmallow?” Stick said as he sat up. He was trying to pretend it was easy for him, but it wasn’t. “No wonder you’re such a pussy.”

“Stick, this is Claire,” Matt said without missing a beat. It was kind of nice to have the old Stick back, actually. “She’s a nurse. And the reason I’m alive, among other things. Be nice to her.”

“Or what?”

Matt could _feel_ Claire rolling her eyes as she said, “I’ve got other weirdo superheroes to spend my time off with. This neighborhood is full of ‘em. I don’t have to be here for you.” Stick grunted and pulled off his shirt, or tried to. Matt helped him the rest of the way. The smell alone told him how serious it was.

Claire snapped on her gloves and touched the skin near the wound. “When was the stitching done?”

“A week ago. Depending on what day it is. I can’t exactly see the calendar.”

“Who did it? Because it looks like shit.”

“Yeah, I usually do a better job.”

“You stitched your own lower back?” Claire asked. “Because I’ve seen Matt do some stupid things to himself – “

“Well now you know where he gets it,” Stick said. “I know it’s infected, but it’s not septic. The wound’s not deep, but the wire really tore up the skin, and the angle made it hard to sew.”

“Did you take anything for pain?” To that, Stick just laughed. “Right, I’m definitely seeing some similarities,” Claire said, and loaded up a needle. “I’m going to administer some Novocain. It’s going to feel cold.”

“Don’t need it.”

“You’re as bad as he is,” Claire said, and tapped Matt on the shoulder. “Help him stay in place.” She made several injections; Stick didn’t flinch at any of them. “So, what kind of name is Stick? Is that your superhero handle?”

“You don’t see me flying around with the fuckin’ Avengers, do you?”

“Because you took out Iron Man with a lightning bolt,” Matt said. “And now he’s afraid of blind people and wants to take all the braille off his elevators. And also I think you said you set his dad on fire?”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“I never know how to respond to you guys,” Claire said. “Matt, peroxide.” Matt handed her a bottle that smelled like peroxide and she went about cleaning the area while she waited for the Novocain to kick in. “Anything else fun I should know about?”

“Malaria. Just getting over it now. Not a big deal.”

“Right, of course.” But she was her usual gentle self when she touched his skin. Stick did have a tremor under his skin, not from the needles or the wipes but from the human contact through the latex gloves, and Matt’s hand on his shoulder. Matt tried to think of the times he had actually touched Stick of his own free will, and couldn’t think of more than half a dozen. Claire continued with her work. “I’m going to have to remove the stitches and drain the wound. Do you think you can hold still for that? It’s not going to be comfortable.”

“Go to town.”

“I wish all my patients were this easy,” Claire said, though more to support Stick than anything else. The wound smelled worse when it was opened. Most of the skin had healed back together, but there were certain spots that she pressed hard to force out pus and fluid. Matt tried not to flinch at the smell, which made Stick chuckle. Claire continued, “I don’t suppose you’ve been to a doctor’s recently for something other than an emergency?”

“I know when something’s wrong with me,” Stick said.

“How old are you?”

“None of your fucking business.” But he said it without any malice.

“What do you do for a living? Should I ask?”

“You shouldn’t ask.”

“I don’t know where you find them, Matt,” Claire said. “Flashlight.” She probably needed it for a closer look at the wound. “Do you have any _nice_ friends?”

“Foggy’s nice.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Nice people don’t get into fights as much,” he pointed out. It wasn’t entirely true – he’d met some nice superheroes in his time, in fact he had two on his babysitter list – but they were probably babies when it came to getting medical treatment like the rest of them. “What was this one about, Stick?”

“Tried to save a kid,” Stick replied, and let that sit.

Claire knew better than to ask further questions. “You’re doing really well. I’m going to redo the stitches. Do you need anything else for pain?”

“I’m good,” said Stick, and Matt could never tell when he was lying, but knew better than to force something on him. Stick sounded drained, and not because he had just been physically drained of liquid from his insides. Matt didn’t like the sound.

Claire worked mostly silently through the stitching, except to ask Matt for another piece of equipment. She was an expert at this, and it didn’t take very long, but she did insist on checking Stick’s vitals and looking him over for other injuries he didn’t know about (impossible, but she didn’t know that) or wasn’t reporting (very possible). “Okay.” She pulled off her gloves with a snap. “You need bedrest, and lots of it. You need to stay off your feet for at least a week. I’m giving you enough packets of antibiotics to get you through a ten-day course. Take two every day, and fever reliever every six hours until it’s gone. If you don’t see considerable improvement in two days, call me. You got that?” She turned in Matt’s direction. “Can you make sure he does at least some of that?”

“I can try.”

“He can be very annoying that way,” Stick said. “A real pain in my ass.” But he thanked Claire for her help before she left.

Claire paused in the doorway to the apartment. “Is he going to go back after that kid?”

He shook his head. “If Stick left the scene, he’s already dead.”

“He’s not used to having someone take care of him, is he?”

Matt knew Stick was listening, but decided he didn’t care. “There’s a reason he came to me.”

“He’s in good hands then,” she assured him, and the elevator arrived, signaling her exit.

*************************

Stick slept through the afternoon and evening. In the periods that he was awake, he wasn’t overly talkative. Matt plied him with a little booze mixed with Pediasure, and made sure he took his medicine, but didn’t force any unwanted conversation out of him. Stick complained that the bed was too soft, but he didn’t get out of it.

In the morning, Matt entered to put on his Sunday best. Stick was awake but he didn’t budge or speak.

“Juan!” Matt called out a little more softly than usual. “Are you dressed?”

Juan stepped out of him room and held out his pin-on tie for Matt to touch. “I am!”

“Sure.” Matt reached under Juan’s blazer and felt the softer material of pajamas. “ _You think you can fool me? Go put on the rest of it._ ” (¿Crees que puedes engañarme? Ve a ponterte el resto.)

Juan huffed but he did as he was told. “ _Is Señor Stick coming with us?_ ” (¿El señor Stick va a venire con nosotros?)

“ _No. He’s not feeling well_.” (No. No se siente bien.)

“ _Will he come when he’s feeling better_?” (¿Vendrá cuando se sienta bien?)

“I don’t think so.” Matt had to check Juan’s clothing with a couple pats to make sure he had the right outfit on because this was Foggy’s day off and he was sleeping in. Foggy, who wasn’t Catholic in the first place, never joined them, nor did Matt expect him to. He sometimes did show up for their post-church pancake breakfast at the diner across the street. “ _Do you have homework from last week to bring in_?” (¿Tienes tarea de la semana pasada para traer?)

“Yes.”

“Do you have it?”

Juan pulled out a sheet of paper and waved it proudly in Matt’s face. “Yes.”

“Then let’s go.” It wasn’t until he got to the elevator that he realized how nice it was to step out of the apartment, away from the uncertainty of having Stick around.

Juan was curious about it, but waited the two blocks beyond where Stick could hear them (because that was how far Matt could hear, too, and he knew that) to ask, “ _How long is_ _Señor Stick staying?” (¿Cuánto tiempo se va a quedar el señor Stick?)_

They walked with Matt’s left hand on Juan’s shoulder, tugging slightly at the fabric. “ _Ingles, gls_.” (Inglés, ingles.)

Juan sighed. “Can Mr. Stick stay with us long time?”

“Do you want him to?”

“ _I don’t think Uncle Foggy likes him_.” (Creo que al tio Foggy no le gusta.)

“ _Stick’s hard to like. When I was young, he was very tough on me. He was a strict teacher,” (Stick es difícil de querer._ _Cuando era jóven, era muy duro conmigo._ _Era un maestro estricto.)_ he explained _. “But you have to show respect for your teachers, and the Bible says we have to be kind to travelers and help people in need, even if it seems like they don’t want our help_.” (Pero tienes que respetar a tus maestros, y la Biblia dice que debemos ser amables con los viajeros y ayudar a las personas que lo necesiten, incluso si parece que no queiren nuestra ayuda.)

“ _How do you know if they need help if they don’t ask?_ ” (¿Cómo sabes si necesitan nuestra ayuda si mo la piden?)

“ _It’s not easy_ ,” (No es fácil) he admitted. “ _Sometimes you have to figure it out for yourself_.” (A veces tienes que descubrilo tú mismo) His cane found the shaky metal ramp that covered the church steps. “Now go to class. Be nice to everyone and pay attention.”

“ _I want sprinkles on my pancakes_.” (Quiero chispas en mis panqueques)

He raised his eyebrows. “ _We’ll see if the diner will do it. Have fun!” (Vamos a ver si el restaurante lo hace. ¡Diviértete!)_ He listened to Juan bound down the stairs to the Sunday school classroom. He knew enough English to follow the classes, and the extra practice was good for him. It was a major victory to get him comfortable with being in a church again after what local priests had done to him in Mexico, but maybe it helped that the services here were in English, making them further removed from what he’d grown up with and what had hurt him.

Matt took his usual seat in the back row, where there was a braille booklet with some of the hymns for him. He also preferred to avoid the church ladies who were perpetually trying to set him up with their daughters because he was the only male his age who went to Mass at least three times a week and had a steady job, and adopting a Mexican immigrant had only upped his adorability. And, of course, they didn't know that he was technically married, even if it wasn't a church wedding and would be over as soon as Juan's adoption paperwork was signed.

He tried to lose himself in the rhythms of the Mass, and the back and forth between Father Lantom and the congregation in blessings, but his mind kept drifting to Stick. He'd probably had much worse wounds and not gone to Matt, though maybe this was just the first since they patched up whatever their weird relationship was. He wasn't hiding a physical illness beyond what he admitted to, but if he wasn't gone by Monday morning with no explanation given, something was definitely wrong, and Matt didn't look forward to trying to pry it out of him, as it usually resulted in new injuries for both of them. Maybe the new Stick would be more forthcoming, or maybe it really wasn't Matt's business. Or hell, maybe he'd say to Foggy what he wouldn't say to Matt.

There was only one way to find out.

Matt collected Juan from Sunday School and they forwent the post-services cake for pancakes (with sprinkles) at the diner. " _I want you to be really nice to Stick, okay?_ " (Quiero que seas muy amable con Stick, ¿está bien?)He used Spanish for emphasis. " _He can be mean to me and Foggy because that's just the way he is. But I'll tell him he's not allowed to be mean to you_." (Puede ser malvado conmigo y con Foggy porque así es como es. Pero le diré que no puede ser malvado contigo.)

" _Did Stick go blind because he's a Black Sky?_ " (¿Se volvió ciego porque es un Black Sky?)

" _No, he was born that way_." (No, nació así.)

" _Did he blind you?_ " (¿Él te cegó?)

" _That was Master Izo. He lives in Japan. He sent Stick to teach me to fight and take care of myself after my dad died._ " (Ese fue el Maestro Izo. Vive en Japón. Envió a Stick a enseñarme a pelear y a cuidarme después de que mi padre muriera.)

" _Why didn't he take care of me?_ " (¿Poe qué no me cuidó a mí?)

 _"They sent someone to take care of you," (Enviaron a alguien para que te cuidara) Matt said. "But I didn't let them take you. They're tough people. It would have been hard for you._ " (Pero no dejé que te llevaran. Eran personas duras. Hubiera sido difícil para ti.)

" _Are you going to teach me to fight?_ " (¿Me vas a enseñar a pelear?)

" _You can take karate at the place where Foggy goes. They have classes for kids_." (Puedes aprender karate donde va Foggy. Tienen clases para niños.)

" _But I can't fight like you_." (Pero no puedo pelear como tu.)

Matt shook his head. " _You're not blind. You don't have to_." (No eres ciego. No lo necesitas. )Juan knew about Daredevil, and that his dad was Daredevil, but he still thought of them as separate people, because he never saw him in costume. Matt added, " _When you're an adult, if you want to go train with Master Izo's group in Japan, you can. But you have to go to college first_." (Cuando seas un adulto, si quiere ir a entrenar con el grupo del Maestro Izo en Japón, puedes. Pero tienes que ir a la Universidad antes.)

" _But -_ " (Pero…)

" _So you should study hard to get into college_ ," (Así que deberías estudiar duro para entrar en la Universidad,) Matt said, not relenting on this for a moment. " _Then you can go and do whatever you want. But it's not as fun as it sounds. Trust me_." (Luego puedes hacer lo que quieras. Pero no es tan divertido como suena. Confia en mí.)

" _Did you go to Japan?_ " (¿Tú fuiste a Japón?)

" _Not to fight. I went to go to the Spirit World_." (No a pelear. Fui para entrar al Mundo Espiritual.)

" _I want to go to the Spirit World!_ " (¡Yo quiero ir al Mundo Espiritual!)

Matt sighed. " _I'm sensing a theme here_." (Estoy reconociendo un patron.)

" _You go all the time!_ " (¡Tú vas todo el tiempo!)

 _"I don't go all the time_ ," (No voy todo el tiempo,) he replied. " _And it's very hard to get there. And maybe we shouldn't be talking about this with the ladies from church sitting close by._ " (Y es muy difícil entrar. Y tal vez no deberíamos hablar de esto con las señoras de la iglesia sentadas cerca.)

" _Why isn't Jesus in the Spirit World_?" (¿Por qué no está Jesús en el Mundo Espiritual?)

Matt was surprised at how easy he found it to answer this one on the spot. " _He was resurrected, so he's still alive. Now finish your pancakes_." (El fue resucitado, así que todavía está vivo. Ahora termina tus panqueques.)

*************************

Stick was in and out for the rest of the weekend. When he wasn't sleeping, he made use of their fridge and shower, but he didn't leave the apartment. One of the few things he had on him was a cassette player with a radio function, and if he was awake, he was listening to that. He slept through dinner and breakfast the next morning.

"Claire said a week," Matt told Foggy after they dropped Juan off at school. "He needs to be off his feet for a week. He probably won't stay that long, but if he wants to stay longer, I'll find him a place."

"But you don't want to find him a place."

Damnit, why was Foggy so good at reading him? "I told him that if he needed a place to stay, he could come to me. But that was before I had a partner and kid at home."

"I wish I trusted him enough to be a babysitter," Foggy said, which made Matt laugh. "But I don't think I ever will."

"Juan knows not to listen to him and Stick knows not to mess with his head."

"Still."

"Yeah, I understand." He didn't totally trust Stick, either. "I don't think he would have come to me if he had anywhere else to go."

"Maybe if he hadn't alienated so many people by killing them, he would have a larger circle of friends. And doesn't he own a trailer in Florida?"

"Do you really want him out? It's your apartment, too," Matt said. Foggy was paying half the bill. They had unified certain revenue streams for tax purposes and to look more officially married to Child Protective Services.

"Nah man, he's a sick old guy. And you don't know this, but he looks a step away from being homeless. I'm not sending him to the curb. What kind of person would that make me?"

"A reasonable one, considering his track record with kids," Matt replied. "But seriously, thank you for accommodating him."

"Fuck him," Foggy said. "I'm doing this for you."

On Wednesday they had to go out to Rikers to meet with a client. Matt hated the transit system so Foggy rented a car, as the one he used to own lived at his parents' house in the Far Rockaways. It wasn't a long enough ride for Matt to get carsick unless they hit serious traffic, which they tried to avoid by taking local roads, and ended up totally lost in Queens on the way home. They parked outside a sketchy-smelling supermarket/butcher and got out to get directions, as Foggy was better at understanding them but Matt was better at remembering them, and when they returned, their car was trapped by stone walls on all sides.

"I didn't do it," Foggy said, but Matt had already guessed that. That kind of delicate stonework would have taken Foggy a considerable amount of time and energy.

"It's the guy on the fire escape," Matt said. He'd been too distracted when they entered to notice the Black Sky up there. "If you want to talk, you have to come down."

Of course the earthbending Black Sky leapt down in broad daylight, his bare feet landing on the pavement as if it were goo. He was massively muscular, but nothing about him was familiar to Matt. "This is private."

"And that's my rental car," Foggy said. "And I'm not totally sure I can get it out of there without crushing it by accident."

"Foggy, we need milk and bread," Matt told him. "And whatever the bottom shelf vodka is. He's going to complain either way so don't spend the money." He gestured with his cane. "There's a Cosi's across the street. That's where we'll be."

"I require somewhere a bit more ... private," the man said. He had an American accent, altered somewhat by years of living overseas.

“Fine, we'll be in the alley next to the Cosi's," Matt said. If it were worth rolling his eyes, he would have. "And see if they have the brand of almond milk I like."

“You owe me for this," Foggy said, and disappeared into the supermarket.

Matt nodded and stepped into the alley with the Black Sky. “So, you’re – “

“Stone.”

“I was going to say an earthbender, but wow, that’s really close. Which came first, the name or the skill?”

“I’m here for Stick.” Typical ninja non-answer.

Matt knew he was guilty of it, too. “If you bothered to track me down, then you know where he is. Talk to him yourself. But do it while my son is at school. And try not to break everything in the apartment.”

Stone grumbled, “I need you to talk to him for me.”

“Yeah, I guessed that. What about?”

“He didn’t tell you anything?”

Matt shrugged. “At this point, it would be weird if he did.”

“Fair point,” Stone said. “Stick left the Chaste.”

“I thought you guys threw him out.”

“Izo-sensei brought him back in,” Stone admitted. “You had something to do with it.”

“If you mean by that that I looked after him when he needed help, yeah. But I didn’t push him into anything. I don’t really know much about the Chaste.”

“We’re all aware of that,” Stone said. “You know what you did, right? Why we ousted Stick in the first place?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry,” Matt said. “I know that isn’t sufficient for the death of two people, but there’s no way to go back and undo that. I have to live with it instead. I wasn’t in control of myself, or I never would have taken a life. And I also wouldn’t have asked Stick to send anyone to rescue me. I would have preferred to be killed.”

“I heard you think you’re very noble,” Stone said, but it wasn’t in a completely derogatory fashion. It was spoken by a person who came from a very different situation. “I’ve heard a lot about you, actually.”

Matt sensed this wasn’t one of those _All good things, I hope!_ situations. “What do you want?”

“We need him back. Whatever he says, Stick’s the best at what we do, and you must understand how important our work is.”

“Right, you’re fighting a war and all that,” Matt said. “You kill Black Skies before they kill anyone else. You try your best to prevent it from getting to that point. I’ve heard this story. But I also heard Izo’s the best, and he’s sitting in prison so he can meditate under a tree in another dimension.”

“He needs to be there to tell when Black Skies are born and find them,” Stone explained. “I’ve handled the Physical World’s branch since Stick left – both times – but Stick’s better at it. He’s better at missions. He’s Izo-sensei’s best student.”

“From what I understand, he was drafted into your war when he was six,” Matt said. “I could understand why he might want to take a break while he’s sick and wounded. You know he got here from Kenya with malaria and an infected knife wound?”

“I assure you, he didn’t come to New York solely for medical care. He could have received that elsewhere.”

Matt shrugged again and said nothing.

“At least talk to him about his duty.”

“Stick’s told me about duty. Those speeches didn’t work too well on me, either.”

“Why are you being so difficult?”

“Stick hasn’t shared any of this with me. He’s been sleeping on my couch and drinking me out of house and home. If he came here for quiet, I’d be a bad host to change that.” He nudged Stone with the rubber end of his cane. Stone _felt_ like he was made of actual stone, but it was just solid muscle. “Tell him yourself. Sounds like you’ve spent a lot more time with him than I have.”

“You know why I’m asking you.” After another non-response from Matt, he sighed. “He listens to you. No one knows why, but he does.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not constantly asking things of him.”

“Yeah, you’re a real Zen master,” Stone said. So he did have a sense of humor. “You think you’re so high and mighty, Murdock, because you’ve gone through life without getting your hands dirty? And jumping around some neighborhood punching out minor criminals doesn’t count. When the stakes are high, you need help from the Avengers.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about getting my hands dirty,” Matt spat back, “except to say that I try to be a good person, and yeah, that means keeping myself out of situations where I constantly need to be killing people. I don’t think that’s a decision I’m equipped to make. Stick knows how I feel. And I know that not every Black Sky is a member of the Chaste. They’re ordinary people with ordinary lives. There’s nothing wrong with that.” He took a breath and added, “I’m sorry if you never had that choice.”

Stone froze, but then he chuckled. “You say you don’t know him that well, but you talk like him.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know what to say to get under someone’s skin. Or you think you do. The thing we all want to know, Murdock, is how you got so deep under his skin.” He shoved Matt against the wall and pressed his hand against Matt’s chest, digging under the tie and suit jacket to find flesh. “What makes you _so special_?”

And then the city died around him as his senses retreated and all of his energy rushed to his center, which was probably a chakra or something, but he couldn’t _think_ because his Black Sky was doing his thinking for him, and that blurry line between their personalities became a wide expanse of gray as Black Sky asserted itself to jump up and yell at Stone. Matt only had a vague sense of Stone’s Black Sky, as Stone was focused and his own personality was dominant and probing, and it was being touched in a place Matt innately knew he shouldn’t _be touched._ His Black Sky was private, it lived inside of him, it wasn’t a person, it didn’t interact with other people, it was small and it didn’t know its own strength and he had to _protect it_ , and that was all he could really feel –

The connection ended and Matt’s focus turned to gasping for air, which he couldn’t seem to get enough of. His legs were jelly and he slid onto the ground, fumbling for his cane and the brick wall behind him and anything in that alley that would give him a sense of place again, and Foggy’s presence did not help him feel better, but at least he recognized that. “Don’t touch me.”

“Okay.” Foggy’s heart was pounding but he wasn’t mad at Matt. “It’s okay.”

He probably thought Matt was having a panic attack, which he wasn’t. He didn’t know what he was having. He found the cane and propped himself up against the brick wall, which was cool and scratchy against his chin, and he focused.

At the end of the alley, the pavement was torn up and Stone was pinned to the wall by a mountain of it that went right up to his chin. It didn’t take Stone long to get out of that. Even without use of his legs and most of his arms he was able to bend it off, and raised a large stone which hovered above his open hand, at the ready.

“Stop,” Matt managed, but his voice sounded like it had been dragged across the same gravel. He hobbled in to obstruct Stone’s view of Foggy. “Just stop. I’ll talk to Stick.”

Stone huffed. “You won’t have to say a thing.” He dropped the stone and bended it back into the pavement so everything was reasonably flat again. Then he disappeared into the ground, which just lowered beneath his feet like a personal elevator, and the hole closed behind him.

“Come on,” Foggy said. He was trying to honor Matt’s request not to be touched, so he tugged on the cane instead. “What happened?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Are you okay?” Foggy begged. “Okay, stupid question, but are you?”

“I just want to go home.”

“Yeah, okay.” Foggy nodded. “Well, I managed to get the car out of its stupid fort, so we can go right now.”

He offered his elbow, but Matt didn’t take it. He found the city around him again as his senses balanced out. The twisty feeling inside him was unrelated. He could find the car himself, and they were going home, and that was all that mattered.

Foggy did a good job of not trying to make conversation or not asking any of the questions he must have been begging to ask on the way back. Matt didn’t like being in the car but he also didn’t want the ride to end when he remembered who was in his home. Maybe he needed to wait. Maybe he needed to calm down more. He didn’t want to be dragged across the coals by Stick right now.

They pulled over as soon as they crossed back into Manhattan and Matt was sick in the trash can next to a dog park. He wasn’t sure if he was just carsick or there were other causes, but it didn’t matter. Foggy suggested they stop for some ginger ale, and Matt agreed to it because it put things off just a bit longer, but his hands were shaking anew and he just wanted to go home and shower and sleep, even if he wasn’t tired.

“Do you want me to talk to Stick?” Foggy said just before they entered range of Hell’s Kitchen and Stick’s improbable hearing.

“What would you say?”

“I dunno, something. I’m a talker.”

“You don’t need to talk to him,” Matt said. “It won’t help.” Stick would know what he wanted anyway. And if by some miracle he couldn’t sense anything was wrong, they would get some breathing room. Maybe he would be asleep.

Of course they weren’t that lucky. Stick was on the couch, drinking and listening to the radio, and Matt could hear him sense up when they entered. Matt froze in the doorway. He needed Stick to say something, anything, because he didn’t have the power of speech at the moment.

“Go clean yourself up,” Stick said, not unsympathetically, and went back to his bottle.

And that was it.

From the shower, Matt could hear Foggy pacing as he debated what to say, if anything. Finally Foggy burst, like a balloon. “Is that it?”

Far more casually, Stick answered, “He doesn’t need me yapping his ear off right now.”

Matt bent over and cried into the drain. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t stop it. He didn’t even know why he was showering. He didn’t feel unclean, just _sick_ , but not like he wanted to vomit again. His head was spinning. He dried himself off and crawled into bed, ignoring the scent of Stick. He didn’t sleep. He listened to Stick breathing in the living room until Foggy went to pick up Juan. He listened to their neighbors who had terrible taste in television and watched the four o’clock news that was so embarrassingly local it was thirty minutes of reporting on subway delays. He listened to the ambulances and police cars going up and down the avenues, and the irritating ring of the bell on the stupid carriages that tourists took to get around midtown. He didn’t know why they were still allowed. He didn’t know who would be lame enough to take them. The horses probably hated it; their shoes never made a good sound clacking against the pavement of Manhattan’s concrete jungle.

He could feel the sun recede across his room and got up to a text from Foggy that he was taking Juan out for pizza. Good for him. Matt didn’t know how he was going to manage without him, but he didn’t want to think about Foggy leaving right now. He didn’t want to think about much of anything. He put on his comfiest hoodie, the one from Columbia that was worn down but felt good against his skin, and stumbled across the living room. He needed to put something in his stomach. “Do you want anything?” he called out to Stick. “Foggy’s going to bring some pizza back but not right away.” Stick wasn’t much of an eater. “How about some toast?”

“Fine,” Stick said, surprisingly amicably. “Don’t burn it.” Ah, good old Stick.

He made toast for the two of them, smeared it with jelly, and set a plate in front of Stick, who came to the table. He was much stronger than when he he’d arrived at the apartment and no longer smelled of infection, but he wasn’t at full strength.

“I know who it was,” Stick said between bites. “I could smell him on you.”

“Gross.”

“Don’t be naïve,” Stick replied. Yes, Matt was perfectly aware of how well scents carried on fabric. “He didn’t hit you in the head too, did he?”

“No.” He focused on his toast. “Foggy bended him into the wall. It was pretty impressive, actually.”

“Considering he doesn’t have a teacher, yes,” Stick assessed, and then went quiet. Apparently, no follow-up.

“He wanted – “

“I know.” Stick cut him off. “I know he wants you to talk to me, and I know what he wants you to talk about. There’s not a lot of options. But that shit – he does that again, I’ll cut his fucking head off.”

Matt paused, then said, “I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“It’s not all about what you _want_ ,” Stick said. “I _want_ to. I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.”

“That’s questionable.”

“Fuck you,” Stick said, but they were both smiling, if only for a moment.

They lapsed into silence again, if their worlds were ever silent, which they weren’t. Even their chewing was unbearably loud.

“I let Juan do it to me,” Matt said. He didn’t know why his hands were shaking again. “I just – I wanted him to know something. It felt like the right way to do it.”

“Because you love him.”

“Yeah.”

“And he was a scared kid and needed to know someone cared about him. So you did what you needed to do. But you did it because Black Sky wanted to do it, too. Black Skies – they can’t grow, so they have an instinct to expand and latch on to other people and keep them close. I don’t know how they choose. I guess it’s just how some people feel an instant connection to each other when they go on a date or whatever horseshit ordinary people do with their lives. Black Sky can’t control you, but it can influence you. It just can’t push you in a direction you don’t already want to go.”

As much as Matt didn’t want to relive any part of today, he knew he had to. “Stone said he wanted to know why I was special.”

“Because he’s a fucking idiot. He has a Black Sky. He’s perfectly aware of how they operate. If he wanted answers, he should have come to me, and I would have told him to go fuck himself, because it’s none of his G-ddamn business.”

“You trained him.” It wasn’t a question. “You raised him and you taught him how to fight.”

“That has been my job description from time to time,” Stick admitted. “He was my protégé. Took over the Chaste for me after ousting me. I didn’t hold it against him. I thought he did a good job of it. Same thing I would have done in his position.”

“Would you have sent people to die to try to rescue him?”

Stick sighed and finished off another beer. “I don’t know.”

“So it was different.”

“I don’t know what to say to you, Matty. People are different. Black Skies are different. And I don’t always make great decisions. But Stone should have known better than to go after you to get to me. If he has any brains left in his head at all he’ll also know that the only reason I haven’t flown across the city and burned him to a crisp is because _you_ wouldn’t like it, you pussy. I bet you’ll even forgive him now.”

“Uh, no, I need a little time on that,” Matt said. “I mean, eventually, yes, everyone is forgiven.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, that’s the guy.”

Stick burst out laughing, and Matt followed him. It was too hard not to. Matt took one of Stick’s bottles of beer and cracked it open. He needed a drink.

“Are you going to ask me why I left the Chaste?”

Matt shook his head. “I figured if you wanted to say anything about it, you would.”

“Yeah, I am pretty good at that,” Stick replied. “It’s not anything dramatic. I just went a bit AWOL and now they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off because Master Izo’s busy trying to talk spirits into teaching him the mysteries of the universe. No big deal.”

“Stone seems to think it is,” Matt countered. “What would my codename have been? Because I assume it wouldn’t have been ‘Murdock’ but that’s what everyone calls me.”

“Eyes.”

More laughter. It hurt but it felt good at the same time. Matt knew he was lying, but he still couldn’t detect it, because Stick was a freakin’ ninja. “I used to think you were Japanese.”

“I am Japanese. I was born in Japan. Doesn’t that make someone Japanese?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, it’s been explained to me.” There were some things Stick just couldn’t fully understand, being born blind. He didn’t seem to care much about them. He didn’t believe he was lacking anything. “I was thinking ... I don’t know, maybe I’ve killed enough kids.”

The beer settled in Matt’s tongue and he let it sink into his taste buds before he swallowed, long and slowly. “Does the Chaste have a retirement plan?”

“Retirement? I’m barely seventy years old! Izo-sensei’s five hundred!” He grabbed the open bottle out of Matt’s hand and drank from it. “Of course he mastered earthbending, that extends your life even more, but still. Just because I _sound_ old doesn’t mean I _am_ old. I could still kick your ass.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“Coulda kicked your ass the moment I walked in here, with the wound and the fever and everything.”

“I’m not doubting you, Stick.”

“I know you’re not. I can always tell when you’re lying.”

“I know.”

“You’re an open book to me, Matty. Just because you’re grown up and you’re married or whatever and you have a kid doesn’t change that.”

“I know.”

“Wiseass,” Stick mumbled to himself, sipping on the beer. “You think you know me better than I know myself. Stone thinks he can figure me out. Everyone thinks they’ve got one up on me.”

“For someone who claims he isn’t an old man, you sure talk like one.”

“Nah, I’ve always talked like this,” Stick said. “If you want me to settle things with Stone, I will.”

“I don’t want you to fall into his trap.”

“It’s not a trap. He just ... well, I don’t think he’s being that smart. He can chase me all he wants, but he needs to leave _you_ alone.” He finished the beer. “I’ll chase him down, give him an earful.”

“Claire said you need to stay off your feet.”

“Christ, I’m not going to fight him. I’m just going to talk to him.”

“Language. And I know how that goes with you, the talking thing.”

“I’m capable of acting like an adult!” Stick insisted. “I just need a few drinks in me first.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll be working on that.” Matt stood up. He definitely didn’t have enough food in him to keep up with Stick’s drinking. It did feel good to feel warm inside, even if it was via alcohol, but he needed to be sober enough to act like it when Juan charged in the door. “They’re in the elevator.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Sometimes I just like to be informative,” Matt replied, dumping their dishes in the sink. He was at the door when Juan entered, and Matt leaned over to kiss him on the head. “How was your day?”

“ _Uncle Foggy took me out for pizza!_ ” (¡El tío Foggy me llevó a comer pizza!)Juan said. “ _We brought you some_.” (También les trajimos algo.)

“And if anyone at the shop didn’t wash their hands, I don’t want to know about it,” Foggy said, setting the box down on the table next to Stick. “That also goes for any viruses they might have – “

“Hepatitis,” Stick said. “But not the communicable kind. But I still wouldn’t lick your change if I were you.”

Foggy threw his hands up. “Now I know why I never see any fat ninjas.”

*************************

Matt didn’t have a chance to talk to Foggy in private again until they were back in the office the next day. He hadn’t had much to say, really, of his own volition, but he knew Foggy wanted to ask, and Foggy deserved an answer.

“He was trying to get to Stick,” Matt explained of his mystery attacker. “He wants him to go back to work. Stick doesn’t want to do it.”

“What did he – “

“I’d rather not go into it,” Matt said. His mood was still off. He had been tempted to go out last night, but he’d been too unsettled to keep his anger in check and he hadn’t wanted any minor criminal on the receiving end of that. It wasn’t right. “I’m okay, Foggy.”

“You’re lying.”

“I will be okay,” he said. “It’s not a lie. And if makes you feel any better, Stick hasn’t killed him yet because he knows I would be upset about it.”

“Yeah, I have some mixed feelings about that,” Foggy admitted. Matt supposed that was fair. “Do you think it’s safe to have Stick around?”

“He would be gone if I thought it wasn’t,” Matt said. “Maybe he wasn’t always there when I needed him, but he came here because he needs me now.”

“I still get to be a little unhappy about it.”

“Yeah, you do. Do you want to get out of the apartment? I know it’s hard on you.”

“After what happened yesterday? Fuck no.” Maybe Foggy didn’t understand what happened but he knew how much it upset Matt. “What about Juan?”

“He’s off-limits. They know that.” He bit his lip. “But maybe your parents can take him for a few days?”

Foggy’s parents loved Juan, and considered him like a grandson, even if Foggy wasn’t technically Juan’s father, so of course Foggy said, “I’m sure they can. But he’s got to stop that business of always telling them it’s his saint’s day. They have the internet. They know he’s lying.”

“I used to do that whenever I had a teacher who was new to the orphanage and I thought didn’t know better,” he replied. “Never worked. Not even once.”

“At least I know where he gets it.”

On Friday they packed up Juan and sent him to his adoptive grandparents, who happily picked him up and took him for a weekend out of the city, where grass and fresh air was available in greater quantities. It wasn’t that Matt thought something was going to happen, but Foggy needed some time to unwind and Marci was between boyfriends, or not exclusive to them (Matt was hazy on the details), and her apartment didn’t have an injured ninja leaving empties on every available surface, so that was a plus.

Matt went out as Daredevil that night. Stick didn’t invite himself and Matt didn’t offer. There was very little activity, mostly just drunks getting too touchy-feely with the women they met at bars and a couple drug deals. Matt left drug dealers alone if they were operating independently and only selling weed, and he didn’t attack the buyers. Someone did try to break into an ATM, but they got nowhere with only a ballpin hammer and Matt just watched him from the roof until the police arrived and charged him with destroying private property and attempted robbery. An officer saw Daredevil’s silhouette and called it in, but the beat cops knew better than to try to pursue him.

Stick said nothing when Matt returned, but the next day, Stick took him to an abandoned warehouse, where they could practice without worrying about CCTV and satellite cameras on the roofs. Matt was always working to improve his billy clubs, which could be combined into a metal staff, but his stick work wasn’t half as good as Stick’s, airbending or not. Stick said after a few tries, “Your forms are sloppy.”

“I don’t have a teacher who isn’t a spirit.” Matt decided not to point out that Stick hadn’t mastered airbending, either, or he would have waterbending now.

“There’s a guy,” Stick said slowly. “He’s in Amdo. That’s Tibet. The Chinese call it Qinghai now. Not a lot of Westerners allowed in.”

“He’s one of us?”

“No, just very spiritual, found his own way to the lion turtles,” Stick replied. “He’s a yogi. And not one of these bored women in tight pants. If he’s not in a laogai reeducation camp, he’s in a cave. Very hard to find. You really need a glider.”

“I built one. Aang said to use wood from a tree that doesn’t exist so I used aluminum. But I can’t fly above the city without people noticing. You can have it.”

“If I go to him, you might not see me for a while.”

“I can’t see you now.”

Stick smiled. “You’re a little pisser. You know that?”

“I think you’ve said it a couple times,” Matt replied. “Do you want to give me any more specifics than an airbending master who lives in a general region of Tibet?”

“No, I do not.”

Then there was only one reason that Stick was asking. “I think you should do it.”

“Yeah, I bet you want me out of your hair. Or your partner does.”

Honestly he was surprised that Foggy was referred to as a ‘partner.’ It was stunningly neutral and accurate. “You know you can stay as long as you want. But if this is something you need to do, you should do it for yourself. And you’re not going to like me saying this, but you should do it for your soul.”

“I didn’t say anything about getting on my knees.”

“It doesn’t have to be about organized religion,” Matt said. “It’s how you feel about yourself. Beyond everything else. All the surface stuff.”

“And here comes your sappy shit.”

“Hey, I held it in for a week,” Matt said. “I know you’re not going to give me credit for it, but I deserve it anyway.”

After bending practice, or whatever it was, they went to Josie’s, mostly because Matt trusted Josie to cut them off before they couldn’t walk, or at least make sure they didn’t pass out in the garbage bag pile outside her door. They barely made it back to the apartment intact, and Matt destroyed whatever erector playset Juan had been working on for weeks before he even noticed anyone else was there. “Fuck.”

“I knew you wouldn’t come out with us,” Stick slurred in the general direction of the person who was obviously Stone. Matt giggled to himself as he wondered if he was actually made of stone as Stick continued, “’s why I didn’t invite you.”

“You usurped Izo,” Stone said, “for drinking and gambling.”

“’s also why I don’t gamble.” Stick couldn’t stand up straight, but he could point, though not entirely in the right direction. “I could still kick your ass. Even without Matty ‘cuz he can’t hold his booze.”

But Stone didn’t attack him. Stone stood perfectly still. It seemed appropriate to Matt, who had several tiny pieces of plastic digging into his back.

“Someday,” Stick said, “You’ll get tired of killing kids, too.”

“They’re not kids anymore.”

“Yeah, that sure is what I taught you.” Stick was fervently looking around for more booze.

“Did Murdock say something to you?”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” And this time, Stick was all snarly about it as he fumbled his way to the fridge. “You better start kissing his ass because he and his damn conscience are the only reasons you’re alive.”

Matt didn’t doubt it. He also didn’t get up. He thought sitting was enough of a struggle, and Stick (probably) wasn’t lying when he said he could handle himself. Finding the fridge empty, Stick staggered to him and pulled on his arm. “Do you want me to hurt him for what he did to you?”

“No.”

Stick released his arm, which flopped to the ground. “See?” he said to Stone. “And he’s the only one here who wasn’t taught how to lie.”

“I should’ve been. I’d be a better lawyer.”

“Just because we’re talking about you doesn’t mean you get to talk!” Stick shouted. Matt already felt that he was lucky he didn’t have more curious neighbors. “You little shithead.”

Matt wondered if Stick had ever called Stone a shithead. Probably not. It gave him a weird sort of pride he was better off not expressing.

“I’m a sick old man,” Stick said. “I’m drunk and I’ve got malaria. I’m done with both of you.” He stormed off into Matt’s room, shutting the door behind him so hard it almost took it off the track. As usual.

Matt sighed and sat himself up. The world was spinning, but that wasn’t abnormal. He couldn’t get himself up. Stone didn’t offer.

Stone was still waiting for a fight.

“Just leave him alone,” Matt said. “It’s what he wants.”

“Because you’re the expert now?”

“Yeah, apparently,” Matt replied. “I’m as surprised as you are.”

Or maybe he just didn’t want to be a dick. Not all the time. Some of the time, certainly, and definitely when he was the Devil, or when he was in cross, but not all the time.

“You’re sitting on a pile of children’s toys.”

“I’m aware.”

Stone huffed, but he left by leaping out the window. Fuckin’ ninjas.

*************************

In the morning, the whole apartment stunk of alcohol, but Stick was gone.

Matt didn’t see him again for two years, and when he did, it was in the Spirit World. Stick was meditating on a mountain peak with such stillness that several small spirits had come to rest on his head and shoulders, their heads making a rattling sound that certainly didn’t seem to bother him from the way he radiated calm and focus.

Matt said nothing, and left him alone.

 


	2. Toph

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filling the prompt: Matt meets Toph

Foggy sucked at earthbending. And he hated it.

The thing was, he wasn’t actually terrible at it, as far as Matt could tell. He just had no teacher, and because air and earth were opposites, none of Matt’s forms applied to Foggy. The elements had to be maneuvered completely differently. Or, that was what Matt had learned in the Spirit World, when Master Izo was willing to talk to him, though Matt never completely trusted what Izo said. But Foggy couldn’t meditate in and out of the Spirit World without a guide, and so it had to sit.

The thing about bending was ... it made you want to bend. Airbending didn’t send Matt leaping between rooftops – he was doing that already – but if he went a few weeks without doing _anything_ , he felt an itch under his skin that built with time. Neither of their bending styles were suited to a tightly-packed urban environment, so it got put on the backburner. As much as Foggy joked about joining the Avengers as their boulder guy, he didn’t actually want to fight crime (or take down governments, or fight aliens, whatever it was the Avengers were actually up to). He was a lawyer and a dad. That was enough.

Except when it wasn’t.

Izo didn’t care about Foggy’s mental wellbeing – he was concerned with Black Skies – and Matt didn’t know anyone else who could guide Foggy into the Spirit World. Stick, maybe, if he wasn’t off in Tibet or wherever, and he probably wouldn’t, just because he was Stick. So Matt turned to his White Lotus contacts.

“I’ll do it,” Natasha said, out of nowhere, in that Matt wasn’t expecting it. He just thought she might know somebody.

“You’ve been to the Spirit World?”

“I found someone to guide me to reach my teacher. Her body was in Siberia, but she was frozen in ice. I had to tell her to come back so I could talk to her,” she explained. “I know I’m not ... okay, whatever you are – “ because she wasn’t going to say ‘Black Sky’ but she certainly had figured that out by now, “ – but neither is Inna. And they did teach us a lot about focus.” She meant Black Widows.

Matt found he had a lot of things in common with Natasha. She wasn’t always available, but when she was, they would chat, sometimes on rooftops after his patrol. She wasn’t an airbender but she sure as hell wasn’t afraid of heights. She did not say what she’d discussed with her teacher, nor did Matt ask.

“I could probably do it,” she reiterated. “No promises. Does he have any experience with meditation?”

“He’s supposed to do it for his blood pressure, but he doesn’t.”

“Do you still go to that yoga studio? Because he’s got to have some kind of training. If I sit there with nothing it’s going to be a waste of both of our times.”

So Matt took Foggy to the yoga studio for morning meditations after they dropped Juan off at school, and Foggy really, really tried, because he knew he needed a teacher – badly – and he was only going to find one in the Spirit World. Matt couldn’t summon one for him. Matt had to learn the elements in order – because he’d started with air, he had to learn water next and then earth. Aang was pretty clear on that. Something to do with the first Avatar’s method of learning the elements; Aang was unsure of the details and he only had information from his own period in history, whenever that was.

“There’s this thing called the Harmonic Convergence, and it resets the balance between good and evil, and between the Spirit and Material Worlds,” Aang said. “It only happens every ten thousand years, and it’s happened a few times since I died. Also, time is relative in the Spirit World.”

So, not helpful.

But Natasha was good to her word. Professional liars tended to be very serious when they actually told the truth. It took her six months to find an opening in her schedule of world-saving, and by then Foggy could at least sit for an hour without fidgeting too much. He couldn’t do it around Matt, though – too much to live up to, he said, and he disappeared with Natasha, returning a few hours later exhausted and baffled.

“She’s _blind_.”

“What?”

“My earthbending teacher,” Foggy explained. “She’s blind. She earthbends by like, feeling the earth beneath her feet? And she gets her information from that. Holy shit Matt, you have to get earthbending.”

“Oh.” That did sound interesting. “Is she a kid, too?”

“Dude, I think she’s twelve,” he replied. “Maybe.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“I learned that she is the world’s greatest earthbender, and I am a fat, lazy, awful bender who will never really understand anything because I’m not good enough.”

“Sounds like Stick.”

“Oh my G-d, I _just_ thought of that! I have my own Stick!” He sounded terrified, but a little intrigued. “Her name is Toph, by the way. You’ll meet her if you get to earthbending. And I guess yeah, she is the greatest earthbender of all time if the universe summons her spirit from beyond time to teach people or whatever, but if I hadn’t met her in the Spirit World, I would be _covered_ in bruises right now.”

“Can you summon her?”

“What, like here? I don’t know how you do that, dude. Neither does Natasha. No, we have to go to her.”

It was not as easy as Foggy made it sound. Matt needed a certain inner calm to reach the Spirit World; he wasn’t used to doing it around people, much less his best friend/platonic life partner/husband/whatever and his superspy friend-with-benefits, which he was kind of sure Foggy still didn’t know about, but Foggy didn’t ask. Which was good.

Needless to say, it took an unusually long time for him to be hit with the additional awareness he gained in the Spirit World, and a bit more to recover from the notion that he was _seeing_ Natasha, more or less, in a way he couldn’t see her otherwise. He was processing information that he couldn’t really comprehend; his mind wouldn’t know what to do with it when he left. But she wasn’t a Black Sky – something that hadn’t been in question – because in the Spirit World, other Black Skies were like shining beacons to him, and his own was more active. He wondered how they saw him, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to cross that barrier.

They avoided spirits because in general, spirits were jerks. Not spirits of people, or projections of living people, but actual spirits, in their general shapes and sizes, who seemed to regard living humans as more or less obnoxious intruders, and responded in kind.

He didn’t ask Natasha if she’d gotten bending in the Spirit World. He figured if she wanted him to know, she’d tell him.

There was so much to process, so they walked in silence to the place where Foggy had met his teacher, which was a long plain of earth with very little on it. In the distance, some tree people were moving slowly, shuffling against invisible wind.

“So ... she’s supposed to be around here somewhere – “

“Ha!” The ground beneath them rumbled and threw them all off their feet, except for Matt, who was able to airbend his way to a graceful recovery and find himself standing before a girl who could not have been more than three feet high.

“Great! Another airbender! Why is it you guys always think you can get away from me?” Her posture was a hint to her blindness – she didn’t seem to care one way or another where she was facing or gesturing, like she was blind from birth and also somewhat stubborn. “Well you can’t!” She stamped her foot on the ground – she was definitely barefoot – and the earth popped out from under Matt and hurled him into the air, and he had to scramble to save himself from a painful landing that still wasn’t all that graceful.

“Hey, that’s my friend Matt,” Foggy said. “And he’s blind, too.”

“So? What does he want, a medal?” Toph said, clearly unimpressed.

“I’m tapping out,” Natasha said. “Have fun, guys.” She faded out, ending her meditation into the Spirit World.

“Another coward,” Toph said. “Though I could understand how anyone would be scared to fight the greatest earthbender of all time!”

“All right,” Matt said, because Foggy seemed to need a boost of confidence. “I’ll fight you. I mean, I probably won’t win, but I’ll fight you.”

Toph’s body tensed as she shifted into a combat stance. “Bring it on!”

Matt knew Foggy was looking at him, so he shrugged, and sent a blast of air Toph’s way, but she was already gone, having burrowed under the ground. She popped up behind him and stomped on the ground to hurl him into the sky.

Her style of fighting was totally different from his. Airbenders avoided and deflected. Even though she was physically small, her stance displayed tremendous power that solidly linked her to the earth.

The earth. She needed the earth to “see.” There was no reason to believe her other senses weren’t as heightened as his. Matt could keep himself off the ground for a considerable amount of time, though he wasn’t good enough to even temporarily hover. He could only bounce from place to place, using airbending to act like gravity mattered far less to him (which it did), and it took her a second to fight him again when his feet touched down. But it was only a second, and then she would twitch and shift her hands, held up like a praying mantis, and the ground would be out beneath him.

He was spending energy but she was drawing strength. It didn’t even seem like she was trying very hard. Eventually he lingered too long, and she caught him, and he sunk into the ground, which closed around him so only his head was sticking out of the solid earth.

“Well?” Foggy said.

Matt needed Foggy’s help to hoist him out of the ground. In the Spirit World, Foggy had an easier time bending, maybe because of the privacy or because the stakes were lower, and he could pull apart the earth so Matt had the freedom to climb out. “I think she’s great.” His arm was sore, but he put his hand on Foggy’s shoulder anyway. “She’s perfect for you.”

“I’m the best earthbending teacher there is! Even the Spirit World thinks so!” Toph was nothing if not enthusiastic about her qualifications.

“And who am I to argue with the Spirit World?” Matt said. “Have fun.”

He meditated out before Foggy could respond.


	3. David and Jonathan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is filling the following requests:  
> \- the divorce  
> \- Matt and Natasha's FWB situation  
> \- More of Marci
> 
> Juan doesn't learn anything about the marriage until he's older, and that's not within the scope of this particular story.
> 
> Questions/comments are appreciated!

Matt hated going to court, if it involved taking Juan with him.

There was always a period of stress leading up to any courthouse or office visit Juan had to make. Even if all the paperwork was properly filed, and every letter of the law was followed (and they _were_ lawyers), at the end there would still be someone else deciding Juan’s fate, and it depended on a variety of factors that Matt couldn’t control. He didn’t like things he couldn’t control, especially when it came to protecting the people he loved.

They had a routine now. Foggy picked out all of Juan’s clothes the night before and checked to see that he was perfectly dressed that mourning. His nice suit was trimmed and pinned at the elbow; Juan didn’t wear any of his prosthetic arms to court to play up the sympathy factor, something Matt had a particular hatred of exploiting, though he understood the necessity of it. They went over the questions Juan might encounter one last time, but by now Juan could say the answers without thinking, and with his accent as much suppressed as possible. He knew all of the boundaries of what he could and couldn’t say about his guardians’ behavior, what to be enthusiastic about and what to only discuss if it was mentioned.

Juan understood what was on the line. He was ten, and not exactly stupid. More importantly, he would do anything to stay with Matt and Foggy, even if it meant extra tutoring, near-perfect grades, and gaining a better understanding of American history than both of them combined.

Their previous trip the year before, when Juan had legally become their son, and Matt and Foggy his fathers, had been more emotional. Even though they’d always passed the Child Protective Services checks with flying colors (standards were low in finding placement for a disabled kid, something Matt already knew), having the weight of that overworked, anxious agency off their backs was a tremendous relief. Afterwards they had a party, and Juan got gifts, and Matt even let him keep the prosthetic arm from Tony Stark, but only after a long, grueling interrogation about what the arm could and could not do, with Foggy staring the billionaire down while Matt listened to his heartbeat.

This visit was the last major step in an arduous process, made so because of the complications of two men adopting a Mexican immigrant and the social politics that involved, as well as the way Juan had entered the country ( _very_ illegally), and the trauma he had experienced along the way, losing his entire family, his village, his way of life, and most of his right arm, to be left with well-meaning strangers in a land whose language he didn’t speak. But Juan never wanted to leave, and Matt would not let him go, and that bond was unbreakable, but they could hardly prove that to child services, much less the US government.

Like every other well-rehearsed meeting, it went smoothly, as Juan was flanked by two very professional lawyers who had also recently gone deeper into immigration law than they had previously, and by the end of it, Juan was a US citizen. All of the paperwork – the certificate of naturalization, the social security number and card, eventually the passport – would come in time, because those organs of government were slow and designed to discourage immigration. But Juan was not only theirs as a child, with custodial rights and protections, but now he had another layer of protection as a citizen, and one less obstacle for the future, wherever he ended up. Everything in front of him was clear and promising.

It was only after the ceremony, and the accompanying celebrations, that things began to die down, and a tension began to grow in Matt that he knew was already alive and well in Foggy: What the hell were they going to do now?

It went unspoken for weeks, until it had become a hum in the back of Matt’s head that he could almost successfully ignore, like the sounds on the street or a white noise that he needed to tune out, until Foggy came in with braille versions of the divorce paperwork.

Foggy’s voice was tense and his gut was churning, but he was trying to put up a good front, and Matt wanted to honor that when Foggy explained, “Look, it’s going to take three to six months to push this through the court system, minimal, and that’s only because it’s no-contest and we’re both lawyers. I thought we should ... um, you know. Get it going.”

 _Do you want to leave me?_ Was Matt’s instinctive reaction, but he had the self-control not to say it out loud. “Do you have plans?”

“I don’t,” Foggy admitted freely. “But I would like to be able to have them in the future. Marci won’t even consider it and I don’t want to meet someone and have them run a background check on me and find out I’m still married.”

That was fair. Everything about this was fair. Matt read through the paperwork. They’d kept everything about their marriage as simple as possible, legal and financially, so it would be easy to dissolve. “There’s nothing here about custody.”

“That I ... did actually want to discuss with you.”

Matt gave himself credit. The strained noise he made wasn’t loud enough for Foggy to hear. Probably. “Okay.”

“You’re Juan’s dad. We both know that. And you’re a great dad. You always will be. But if something happens to you – I think it might be good for me to retain some custody rights.”

“Those would be covered by the adoption.”

“If you died, yeah, but hopefully that won’t happen. But if something, G-d forbid, were to somehow happen to you, with hospitals and stuff, or you were to disappear into the Spirit World, I don’t want any question about what happens to Juan while you’re gone. Or injured. Or on Thor’s planet or whatever.”

Matt grimaced. “I don’t have any travel plans.”

“But you understand what I’m saying?” Foggy’s heart was hammering inside his chest.

“Yes.” Matt had to relent. He had to give him something. The idea was reasonable, Matt just tended to get ... emotional, when someone stepped in between him and Juan. “It’s a good idea. Write up what you want and we’ll hammer it out in the documents for family court.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to ask me what I want?”

“No.” He came off sounding annoyed, but to be honest, he hadn’t thought that far. He hadn’t planned. He didn’t want to.

He didn’t want Foggy to go.

*************************

“So I’m kind of married to Foggy,” Matt told Natasha, and certainly not in the smoothest way he could have, retying his tie in the bathroom doorway without his pants on. They used one of her safehouses so Matt didn’t have to go in and out of the Avengers building and because Tony Stark had a strict “no ninjas” policy. Even if he couldn’t enforce it, it still made running into him in the elevator awkward.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Natasha said in her usual deadpan. “You’ve probably been an old married couple since the day you met.”

“No, I mean – we’re _married_ ,” he said. “We went to the county clerk and got married so that we could get temporary custody of Juan because they wouldn’t give him to a one-parent household where the parent has a significant disability. Foggy couldn’t find another way, so he planned it out and offered. And I said yes.”

Natasha looked up from her tablet. She was definitely staring at him. “I guess that makes all the jokes less funny. So why is this suddenly a problem?”

“Now that Juan is adopted and a citizen, Foggy wants to get divorced. Which was always the plan. And totally reasonable. I mean, we’re not, uh, _married_ – in the traditional sense.” He made a little hand gesture to emphasize the unspoken point. “Juan doesn’t know. We never told him the specifics of how he got adopted. We’ve just told him that Foggy came in to help him adjust to life in America and that he was always going to move out.” He realized how stupid that was, now. “We just did what was necessary at the time.”

“You don’t want to get divorced.” Natasha stated it, because it was a fact. She didn’t dance around things. It was one of the things he liked about her.

“I just don’t want him to leave. I mean, it’s complicated – our lives are complicated.” For example, he and Foggy both saw other people, and they really only had the availability because the other person was the babysitter. And then there was Daredevil. “My dad was a single dad and he worked nights, but we did okay, I think. I’m not that worried about that. But Foggy leaving will crush him. And – and now Foggy wants some custody, and I don’t even begin to know how to negotiate that.” Once he had his pants on, he sat down on the edge of the bed. The apartment smelled very classy for a safehouse, because it was that kind of safehouse. “He’s not being unreasonable. He’s being nice and he loves Juan and he wants the best for all of us. I’m the one who’s hung up on it.”

“Divorces and custody tend to be things that people get ‘hung up’ on,” she said, as sympathetically as Black Widow ever got. “Have you told him how you feel?”

“What am I supposed to say? That we should just stay married because I don’t like change? That he can’t go out and live his own life?” He pressed his balled fist into the bed, wishing that he was touching something harder than a mattress that just gave way. “Why am I so upset about this?” Five minutes ago he had been as relaxed as he could be, and now he was getting worked up. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to hit himself, to make himself stop shaking.

“Matt,” Natasha said, and took his hand. If he trusted her any less, or she was any less brave, it would have been an inadvisable move. “Calm down.”

It was a toneless order, but it worked all the same. Somehow. But it took a long time.

“I’m sor – “

“Don’t apologize,” she said. Not warmly like Claire said it; she said it like Natasha said it, which could come off as impossibly cold, but never was. She was genuine, and she knew how to calm people down. She had some experience in that area. She got out of bed. “Take your clothes off.”

“What?”

“Because I assume you don’t want them soaking wet,” she told him and walked straight into the bathroom and started the bathtub. “Come on. It’ll be good practice for me.”

“What do you – oh. Is this, um, a bending thing?” He knew Natasha’s Russian trainer was a waterbender and so was her Black Sky daughter, the one in the Chaste. And he knew Natasha was holding back on him about something.

“It is if it works,” she said. “Also, when have you never not owed me a favor?”

“Um, okay.” He couldn’t deny her that. And he was very confused, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen him naked before – maybe even with the lights on. It wasn’t something he paid attention to. “You’re not going to turn the water to ice, right?”

“That’s not the only thing waterbenders can do.”

She didn’t fill the bath up very high, so he could lay down and still have his head and some of his body above water level without having to float.

“Relax,” she told him. “This is about opening chakras or something.”

“Or something?”

She shrugged. “My teachers never explain anything.” She was holding her hands out in front of her, over the tub and Matt’s body. “This shouldn’t hurt, but tell me if it does.”

“You’re very reassuring.”

“And shut up,” Natasha said, and waved her hands from side to side – or that was a far less elaborate description of what she was actually doing. What he knew of waterbending was that it had to be fluid, even more so than airbending, and the style was similar to tai chi. You had to make yourself boneless, but her hands were going too fast for him to track them. She was very graceful. There was something about her past involving ballet, but he didn’t remember the specifics now.

He did try to be quiet, so she could concentrate, but he gasped when the rush of energy came when the water moved around him, back and forth but also seemingly through him, like a warm, gentle flow through his insides instead of on his skin.

“Okay?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I’d explain it,” she offered, “but I’d lose concentration. Think of it like water acupuncture.”

“Without the needles.”

“Yes,” she answered, and went back to work.

He could feel the soothing flow that mirrored her hands, which weren’t even close to touching him. They were guiding the water, which was moving in tandem with her, but it was all just energy – everything was energy. All of the elements were energy – Aang had said something about that – and they could be manipulated, and they were all were just energy too, a collection of atoms –

He had spaced out when a pinching feeling brought him back to reality, or a very altered reality, as it were. He felt lit up, and wondered if he was actually glowing. The water, which still was only going around him, not actually inside him, had touched something, and it was like rousing a sleeping giant –

Oh. Right.

It wasn’t bad, like when other people had touched his Black Sky without permission, and not nearly as intense as when Juan did it with his permission. It was just sort of like Black Sky was with him, in his body, and was being affected, too.

Natasha’s movement stopped. “Are you okay?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer her. He wanted to be polite. He wasn’t feeling hostile. “Yeah, that’s just ...” He didn’t want to say it. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say, _that’s the spirit that lives inside me and would have killed me if it hadn’t been stopped, but it’s cool, even though people think it’s a demon_.

“I haven’t done this with a lot of people. It requires a certain level of trust,” she admitted. “I don’t have a lot of experience. You have to tell me if something doesn’t feel right.”

“It’s not me, it’s – “ But again, the words didn’t come. “You can continue.” He knew she needed a push now. She probably hadn’t found a spare spirit in anyone else. “I want you to.”

This time, it took longer for him to be comfortable with it, but it worked. Black Sky’s initial reaction, which was vaguely protective, dimmed, and Matt relaxed. The tips of his fingers and toes were tingling. The flow of oxygen in his bloodstream was renewed by the psychosomatic effects of breathing in a trance state (He’d been meditating long enough to not be a complete dummy about it). Every once in a while, the water would rub him the wrong way, or should he say, the energy would brush up against him, and he would have a flash of protective anger, but he knew that wasn’t him. That was Black Sky. It didn’t rule him. It was just part of him, even if he forgot about it sometimes.

“You’re really good at this,” Matt told Natasha after she finished and he climbed out of the tub, wrapped in towels. “Are they going to start calling you Water Witch now?”

“I’m playing this one close to the chest,” she said.

“I understand,” he replied. “I’m glad you shared it with me.”

“You know there’s another spirit in you, right?”

He nodded. “It’s supposed to be there. It just – I forget that it has its own emotions but I don’t feel them most of the time. I used to think I had the Devil inside me. But it’s not evil and it can’t control me.”

 _Black Sky can’t control you_ , Stick had said. _But it can influence you. It just can’t push you in a direction you don’t already want to go_.

 _He_ wasn’t upset about Foggy leaving. _Black Sky_ was.

“Thank you.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You were very helpful. It was ... therapeutic.”

“I didn’t think I would ever be described as a therapist.”

“And I didn’t think I would ever drink out of a mug that says, ‘World’s Greatest Dad,’” he pointed out. “Or, I hope it does.”

*************************

Matt returned home to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn. Both of the other denizens of the apartment were sound asleep. He peeked in on Juan, brushing his fingers through Juan’s hair, and he tapped on the ceramic statue on the bedstand. It was of St. Matthew, after the name Juan had taken at Confirmation. It was a rather crude statue, a gift from someone in the church, of the apostle with a little scroll and feathered pen in his hands, and a cupid kneeling just beside him, hands clasped together in prayer. Matt suspected that Juan liked it because he knew it was one of the few things in the room Matt could really appreciate. There were posters on the wall, and one picture of Juan’s family that Foggy had managed to acquire (though it had taken the Avengers’ supercomputer and Scott Lang’s hacking skills to find it off a dead cell phone) behind a glass frame. Except for an occasional jibe from Foggy, before Juan Matt had almost forgotten how much flat surface colors and prints meant to people. A lot, it turned out.

Juan wasn’t leaving him. Matt would never let him. He had no idea how he was going to make it through Juan leaving for college. But Foggy was an adult. Foggy was different. Foggy wasn’t another Black Sky.

 _They can’t grow, so they have an instinct to expand and latch on to other people and keep them close_. Another half-explained bit of wisdom from Stick. Stick always wanted Matt to cut people loose, but Matt knew firsthand that Stick’s Black Sky felt otherwise. But Stick was unavailable – he was in Tibet, or the Spirit World, and he wasn’t known for being the most helpful person in the world.

Frustrated with Black Sky, which he could neither feel nor communicate with at the moment, Matt fell into a fitful sleep.

*************************

The rule was: absolutely no divorce talk in the apartment, even if Juan wasn’t home. And it took Foggy a couple days to sort out what he wanted to say in the custody document, the first draft of which he left very consciously on Matt’s desk.

Matt ignored it for three days. He knew that Foggy knew he was ignoring it. That was fine. He would take whatever space Foggy gave him to avoid a full-blown panic attack on the level he hadn’t had in years. It took Foggy standing over him, spurring him into action by saying, “Don’t be a douche.”

So he read the papers. They weren’t long. Matt would have primary custody. There would be no official visitations on Foggy’s end, at least spelled out in the divorce settlement that had to go to court. But Foggy had to be consulted for medical decisions, and even though Matt had primary custody, Foggy retained his parental rights. In exchange, he would be expected to pay for half of Juan’s living expenses until the age of eighteen, as he was able.

It was a fair, simple document. Things that went to family court rarely were.

“I need to think about it.”

Foggy was slumped against the doorway of Matt’s office but he was tense. “What do you need to think about?”

“I don’t know. Everything.”

“This is just paperwork, Matt. I’m not moving out tomorrow. I’m not leaving you and I’m sure as hell not leaving Juan. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Matt frowned. He knew that Foggy was right; it didn’t mean anything. They weren’t _really_ married, in the way he was raised to think of marriage, and they didn’t want to be. And Foggy was right about other things – women could do a background search and find out he was married. Marci wouldn’t take him seriously until she saw the papers. That had always been the deal.

But at the thought of signing his name to a document, even if he could read it, Matt’s whole body froze. His arms might as well have been paralyzed. _Don’t let him leave don’t let him leave_ – “Just give me a little more time. Please.”

The request came out so pitifully that Foggy’s shoulders slumped; he obviously felt bad for him. Not that this was easy on Foggy, either. “Do you want to discuss any of the terms?”

“They’re fine.”

“Okay.” Foggy nodded. “I’m nodding.” He knew Matt could space out sometimes, and benefited from the narration.

“Thanks.”

*************************

Foggy didn’t bring it up again that week, and then Matt breathed free on Friday, when they closed the office and he knew he was in the clear, at least until Monday morning. Foggy took Juan out to the movies on Saturday, and Matt spent most of the time they were gone trying to get into the Spirit World and failing. He wasn’t calm enough, and he didn’t want to pull on that thread of his Black Sky to catapult him in, not when it was still so agitated. His restless energy turned into a patrol that night, and a black eye Sunday morning as he walked to church with Juan. Matt held onto his shoulder, but sooner or later Juan would be tall enough that Matt would hold his arm near the elbow, like he did with Foggy. He didn’t want it to be soon.

Juan always waited until they were two blocks out, the length of Matt’s hearing, to say something, even though Foggy was the one sleeping in the apartment. “Are you and Uncle Foggy fighting?”

He frowned. “No,” he lied, and he _hated_ lying to Juan. “There are just some things at work that are very stressful.”

“Pio says you’re mad at him.”

Matt had some jerk response but it ended in a stutter. It was always awkward hearing Juan talk casually about his Black Sky – whom he’d named Pio because of Padre Pio, the saint who was attacked by demons – or even to his Black Sky, which had something to do with how Juan’s Black Sky had manifested once in the Material World before Matt cut him down, so they had a more intense connection than usual. Juan talked about him (because his Black Sky either had a gender, or Juan had assigned him one) the way someone his age might talk about an imaginary friend, making it all the more eerie because “Pio” was anything but imaginary. Matt had heard and touched him. He didn’t like the influence, but he knew he couldn’t stop it.

Finally he managed to say, “And how does Pio know?”

Juan shrugged. “I didn’t ask. He just knows things.”

“Oh.” He desperately wanted to probe deeper, but he knew he couldn’t. There were just some territories that were too dangerous to wander into. “I think my Black Sky is a little mad at Foggy, but it’s hard for me to talk to it, so I don’t really know why.” The lies and truths in that sentence were blended together because he couldn’t be as honest as he wanted to be, and he wouldn’t be, because he would never hurt Juan. He felt nauseous at the very idea of causing Juan any kind of emotional pain. “You don’t have to worry about it. We’re okay. Even when people love each other, they can still get mad at each other, because they’re really mad at something else and they don’t know how to express it.”

“Mrs. Caldwell said the greatest love in the bible was between David and Jonathan,” Juan said, referring to his Sunday school teacher. “Are you like them?”

Matt racked his brain, trying to think if David and Jonathan were gay or not or that was just subtext. But Mrs. Caldwell said it, so it had to just be something people read into, right? David had gone on to marry a ton of women, then had basically committed adultery. Matt remembered that much. “I don’t know if I’m qualified to answer that. But yes, we love each other as friends, and we love you very much.” He tugged on Juan’s shoulder for emphasis. “Whatever’s going on, we’ll work it out. That’s what people who love each other do.”

“Okay.” Juan sounded like he mostly believed him, or he was just too scared of the idea of his parents fighting to say otherwise.

Matt needed to fix this, fast.

Even though he was tired from last night, stress kept him awake through the sermon, so Juan didn’t have to poke him, though it was pretty easy to sleep with glasses on. His attention still drifted, but he kept his face carefully impassive as he heard the droning of the volunteer passage reader – “for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’”

Matt picked his head up.

“So we can say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’” the overeager little bugger said. He was way too into this for a Sunday morning. But it gave Lantom a few minutes off his feet. “‘Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teaching – ‘”

 _Oops_ , Matt kind of wanted to say. Well, maybe the apostle Paul didn’t have the access to the Spirit World that he did. Wait, what were they reading from? It was definitely too late to ask. Juan had a bible open on his lap, but he hadn’t flipped the page in a long time. It might not even be open to the right spot. Considering Matt’s own braille edition was eighteen heavy volumes, he could hardly be expected to carry it back and forth each week.

Juan was a good kid. Patient, caring, understanding. Way less fidgety than Matt remembered being at his age.

But he was a Murdock. He did have the Devil in him. _Sort of_.

He deserved a better dad. One who had his shit together. He deserved to have Foggy around; Foggy deserved that custody. Matt would just have to work it out.

After the service, Matt leaned over and kissed Juan on the cheek. “C’mon. Let’s go get pancakes.”

*************************

 _I will not be afraid_ , Matt reminded himself, over and over again, as he sat on his meditation pad next to his bed, the little altar set up in front of him. It was daylight; Juan was at school, Foggy at a dentist appointment. No one expected the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen to make an appearance in broad daylight. They probably thought he was fearless. _Perfect love, cast out fear_. All he had to fear was himself. Literally.

His sense of the room around him dissolved and the plains of the Spirit World stretched out in front of him. He always needed a moment to collect himself after the flood of new sensory information, and the Spirit World was hardly a static place. Nothing was fully anchored to any particular reality that he could make sense of, and it could be very, very big.

He could find Izo’s tree easily enough. Now that he knew to look for it, the presence of so many Black Skies – dead, mostly, trapped in time – was a beacon for him. Master Izo had spent over two decades in the Spirit World now, but that didn’t mean he was always available. Sometimes thousands of formless spirits swirled around him, protecting him from any inquisitors. Sometimes he’d gone off elsewhere, and the tree was empty. Sometimes he was just too deep in meditation to respond. That was fine – they didn’t have much to say to each other, now that Stick was off the grid and Matt knew it was considered at least partially his fault.

Now was one of those times when Matt would have made an exception, but the hole in the tree was actually closed, as if it had twisted itself to protect Izo. Matt sighed, glanced at the airbender spirits who were meditating on their own stumps, and turned to leave.

There was another Black Sky behind him, one that he hadn’t noticed before. He was pretty sure this one was a man who had been a Black Sky in life and died, but stayed in the Spirit World after his death. He was seated on a turtleduck big enough that the shell was just about the right size for his legs, which were shriveled and useless. His hair was in long dreads, wrapped up and wound around his head and finishing in a big knot, and he had airbender tattoos.

“Hi,” Matt said, because this guy was obviously making his presence known. “I’m Matt.”

“I’m Paul,” said the spirit. Yes, definitely a dead Black Sky. Probably a former Chaste member. “You’re looking for Izo-sensei?”

Definitely the Chaste, then. “Yeah, but he doesn’t seem too available.”

“He’s busier than people know,” Paul replied. Even though everyone spoke the same language in the Spirit World, Matt had the sense that this man – who had died at a very, very old age – definitely had an American accent. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Master Izo helped me talk to my Black Sky,” Matt explained. “I need to know how he did it.”

Paul was slow to move, even to nod. He had a careful patience about him, something that he must have nurtured when he was alive. He was wearing airbender robes. “It’s different for everyone. Black Sky doesn’t have proper definitions.”

“I know. My son can just – he talks to it and it talks back. Like best friends. But I can’t do that. It’s all kind of ... one-way.”

“Your relationship with your Black Sky is like any relationship,” Paul explained. “It has to be built over time. Trust has to be established. There has to be communication over time. But since you operate in the same physical space, you relate to each other too much to actually see each other.” Paul smiled. “I want to say it’s like trying to see the back of your head, but I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

“I used to be sighted,” Matt said. He wondered if people could tell that in the Spirit World. He definitely could tell Paul was a spirit himself, and that he had his own Black Sky spirit, and that he was an airbender. He had a vague notion of what he looked like. That was a lot of information; Paul could probably get more. “I understand.”

“If you open that channel, between you and your Black Sky, it can be very dangerous. Or just, I suppose, rather loud, when it wants its wishes known. It can’t leave or control you, but it certainly can scream. I thought you should know what you’re getting into.”

“That’s a first,” Matt said. “Usually I’m shoved into things.”

“Izo-sensei does have a particular style,” Paul said with a slight laugh, and Matt realized that maybe Paul had known Izo longer than even Stick. Maybe he was older than Stick. “He trained me the same way.”

“Most of the spirits I’ve met here who used to be people have been dead for thousands of years.”

“There’s others. People come to the Spirit World for peace and spiritual understanding. Not everyone wants to talk to living people who bounce from place to place in such a hurry,” Paul said. “Time is an illusion, though I suppose you’ve heard that, even if you don’t accept it, so it’s not very helpful.”

“I don’t want to be rude,” Matt said, “but it’s not.”

Paul was smiling. Matt had a vague sense of that. If asked what Paul looked like, he wouldn’t be able to describe him, but he knew he was smiling. The Spirit World was _so weird_.

“Your Black Sky is less bound by physical space here,” Paul explained. He really did sound like he wanted to be helpful. “For example ...” He put his fists together, took a deep breath, and on the exhale, an energy with an undefinable color and no clear edges emerged from his pores, spreading out around him until it was about twice his size, gently hovering as if it, too, was breathing.

“Um, hi,” Matt said to Paul’s Black Sky. It didn’t respond, but it was sending out waves of emotions like the tide against sand: protectiveness, caution, and concern. It was carefully neutral to Matt’s presence, but Matt understood that that could change in an instant, and he was relieved when Paul drew his Black Sky back inside him.

“Should Black Skies talk?” Matt asked, since he now seemed to be getting answers.

“You should only do it with someone whom you completely trust, and someone your Black Sky already likes,” Paul said. “And even then, it’s not very advisable. Remember that these spirits live a tortured existence. They exist halfway in one world and halfway in the other, and there’s no way to fix that. When your body dies, even then Black Sky doesn’t go free and return to the world of spirits. The two of you are too entwined. It wouldn’t even truly want to go free. It wouldn’t be freedom. It cannot exist as a separate entity from you. If you think of it as an essential part of yourself, no greater or less than your own person, it will be more receptive to your overtures.”

“Is there a way to translate that into a thing I can do?” Matt asked. “Everything I hear is very ... vague.” He wasn’t trying to be rude, but he was trying to be honest.

“Your Black Sky is used to being ignored,” Paul pointed out. “It’s going to take patience to wear down that instinct.” He pointed to the air turtle out in the distance, the one the size of a stadium. “Go to the air turtle. It may be able to help.”

Matt was going to explain that he already had bending, but he realized that probably wasn’t what Paul was talking about. “Thanks.” He paused. “You didn’t need to help me.”

“I don’t have a lot on my schedule,” Paul said, “but if you want to return the favor, can you check up on my son? He should still be alive.”

“He’s one of us?”

Paul shook his head. “It isn’t inheritable. But airbending is.” He added, “I know it’s a common name, but his name is Samuel Wilson.”

Matt was taken aback.He only knew of one Sam Wilson, and while he didn’t know him that well, he did know the guy _flew_. “Yeah, I might know him.”

“We weren’t the closest family when I was alive,” Paul said. “I was in the Chaste. I was busy. So he’ll probably just be mad at you for asking. But ...”

“Yeah. I will.”

“Thank you.”

*************************

 

There was a pathway up to the lion turtle, but it required leaping from hovering rock to hovering rock to traverse it. Essentially, you needed bending. The lion turtle hovered in the sky, seemingly oblivious to the (spirit) world around it, only opening its eyes as Matt reached the last ledge, still very far out. Then the lion turtle reached out with its massive claw and held it out in front of its face, providing another place for Matt to stand. With its massive nostrils it breathed out no scent, but it was _very_ there, unlike other things in the Spirit World.

“Great Lion Turtle,” Matt said, not quite sure how to address it, “I ... well, I don’t know how to put this. I can’t talk to the spirit inside me. It’s so close to me but it’s so far away.” He swallowed. “I know this may not seem like a very ... important use of your time, but can you help me talk to my Black Sky?”

The lion turtle had eyes so large Matt could _hear_ it blinking. It had no heartbeat – he wondered if it had proper organs – but he could hear every gentle inner sigh. It sounded like a whale at sea, if Matt correctly remembered what whales sounded like.

Its voice was impossibly low but still audible, the rumble of it echoing in Matt’s bones when it finally spoke, “There are not two of you. One is not inside of the other. You are one, as you are with all life. Distance is an illusion, obscuring the interconnectedness of all life.” Its other claw pressed against Matt’s forehead. “Do not live in ignorance of reality any longer.”

The world was bathed in light, or what Matt’s brain processed as light, and as that light flashed in and out it withdrew into an endless sea of stars, forever spreading out and separating again so that they seemed like different entities when they weren’t. It was the Black Sky procession of spirits above Izo’s tree, manifested endlessly in every direction, and Matt could not draw on a memory of someone or something – anything living – without seeing it in the sky and his direct connection to it, and every time, the distance was the same, drawing close and pulling away because he could not stand to not hold himself somewhat apart from the others, even though the others were _everyone_.

Matt pushed past Foggy, and his dad, and Fisk, and Stick, and Natasha, and his first grade math teacher, and his mother, and St. Michael, his patron saint, and grabbed hold of the thread that led him back to himself, and faced his Black Sky.

The form it assembled wasn’t its true form because it had none, but it imitated Matt, or Matt as he had been the day he was blinded, when he was just a child, when both of them had still had the potential to grow. “Hello,” he said, lamely. “I’m Matt.”

Black Sky responded with a rush of emotions, not words, and Matt realized Black Sky didn’t understand _names_ , because spirits didn’t need _names_ to tell each other apart. But at least he was trying.

“I’m sorry we haven’t seen much of each other,” Matt continued, “but we need to talk about Foggy.”

Black Sky didn’t know the name so much as the sensation of a person, and all of Matt’s memories of Foggy rushed up inside both of them like a newfound spring. “Don’t let him go,” Black Sky said. “Everyone leaves us.”

Man, how was he going to explain Juan’s college to this spirit kid? “He’s not leaving. Not yet.” Seeing Black Sky was unsatisfied, he continued, “Relationships change over time. It isn’t always good or bad. It just is. We can’t expect things to say the same forever.”

Which was about when he realized he was a hypocrite, because Black Sky _would_ stay the same.

It was _mad_ at him about that. “Let me talk to him. Let me convince him not to leave.”

“It’s not our place to do that,” Matt said. He was terrified of the idea of letting Foggy touch his Black Sky, not because of how it would feel to Matt, but what it might do to Foggy. His relationship with Stick had been forever altered and intensified when he had touched Stick’s Black Sky, and when he’d let Juan touch his. “He needs to be able to be his own person. He can make his own decisions. He won’t leave us, not like you’re thinking. And even if he does, eventually, that’s his choice. We have to respect it.”

“Everyone leaves us. You let them go.”

“That’s not true,” Matt said. “I don’t actually control everyone around me.”

“You could, if you wanted to,” Black Sky said darkly, his face taking a shape Matt didn’t like. “You hold back _so much_.”

Matt idly wondered how that would work, exactly, if he let Black Sky spread his influence, or he harnessed Black Sky’s latent abilities to his purposes. He knew Izo and Stick both did it, in some fashion, and that was why they were so powerful. But he didn’t let that thread trail off too far. “Do you love Foggy?”

“ _Of course_.” Black Sky sounded annoyed to be asked.

“Then don’t hurt him,” Matt said. “If you hold me back you’re hurting him. You’re causing him pain. You’re destroying the friendship you want us to preserve. Let him go, and have faith in him to stay, and to be there when we need him. He always has been, and he always will be.” Matt was surprised at the confidence with which he said it. “I need you to believe me. I need you to stop fighting this. Foggy won’t leave, and even if he does, he’ll come back.”

Black Sky hesitated, going in and out of focus. Its hesitation blurred its edges, revealing its inhumanness. But it was also a part of Matt, and Matt felt an intense desire to protect it, as strong as his desire to protect Foggy _from it_.

“Don’t ruin this,” Black Sky said. “Don’t let him hurt us.”

It dissolved, and as the Spirit World fell away with it, Matt dreaded the conversation about college. Hell, now he was afraid of the fireworks for sending Juan to _summer camp_.

*************************

Foggy knew something was up with Matt.

Granted, this didn’t take a real Inspector Brown to notice. Matt loved his secrets, but he was always very bad at hiding the fact that he _was_ keeping secrets. He could never play it cool when he was sitting on some thought or idea.

As their honesty policy was as strong as it could be between two friends who didn’t want to end up strangling each other, when Matt did try to hide something, Foggy let him have it. In return, Matt didn’t call him on some lies that must have been pretty obvious. It was a nice, unspoken arrangement. These things settled themselves anyway – it was usually a rare depressive spiral that Matt would either pull himself out of with medication and time or would require Foggy dragging Matt out of bed and to the doctor’s. There was a recognizable pattern to it, and Matt was clearly more than okay – after the fact – with Foggy once _literally_ kicking his ass out of the apartment until he got some sun and saw his psychiatrist. Matt even thanked him later, in his evasive way, the gratitude slipped in between more innocuous comments over a harried lunch break. Then he put itching powder in Foggy’s aftershave lotion.

So Foggy wasn’t surprised when the wall went up between him and Matt after he presented the divorce paperwork. Hell, Foggy probably would sulk a bit himself if their positions were switched, and he wasn’t one to sulk for more than one hangover. And he was proud of the show Matt put on in front of Juan, and how the tension was restricted to the office, though Matt did make himself scarce at night, after he tucked Juan in, and while Foggy suspected the worst, sometimes Matt went out and came back still in his work clothes, as if he had _actually_ just gone for a long walk.

When Matt asked for time, Foggy gave it to him. Even though there was no decision to make, he understood. But Foggy needed a vent for his frustrations, too, and his breakup with Debbie was particularly ill-timed in this regard, so he texted Marci, who would at least listen to him if he bought the drinks, and then maybe take him to her much nicer apartment if he stopped being so morose in time.

“I’m seeing someone,” she told him.

“I take it you’re not that exclusive,” he said, his words a little slurred, as they were in the elevator heading up to her apartment when she said it.

“Well, if he’s going to cheat on me ...” She trailed off with a shrug. “He’s lucky he’s good in bed. I want to end strong, and telling him I’m dumping him for a married guy will be a nice way to do it.”

“Ah, fuck, don’t remind me.” Foggy shook his head. “Though – wait, are we getting back together? Like - ” He pointed to her and then himself. “ – _together_ together?”

“Dunno. Are you still married?”

“Matt’s being a little bitch about signing the papers,” he said, then giggled. “I just called Matt a little bitch. Which he is like, the opposite of. He’s a hound.” His stomach throbbed. “Ah, fuck, I forgot that was his – it was his – forget it. Forget I said anything.” He waved in her general direction. “Nasty shit.”

“If it makes you feel better, I am still friends with women who have fallen for his ‘sad puppy face.’ Which I know is not by accident.”

Foggy nodded. “He was making it at me.”

“He wants you to ask to touch his face and then blow him?”

“Don’t even start,” he said as the elevator door opened. He was glad he had the hallway plan from this spot to her apartment memorized because other directions were hazy. “No, he wants to stay married. Because it’s like ... it’s good. We’re good together. But we’re not monks.”

“Yeah, that’s the reason you’re here,” Marci said as she unlocked her door. “And I thought you were done whining.”

“I’m sorry.” Though mostly he was focused on just how sorry he would be if he vomited on her white carpet. It wasn’t that he’d drunk so much, just that the whole situation made him feel ill. “I’ll be a good ... um, person you cheat on your boyfriend with.”

After sex, he didn’t pass out. He didn’t even shamelessly fall asleep on top of her like a good alpha male worthy of being the guy you have on the side. He stared at the ceiling and said, “If he signs the papers, will you take me back?”

“I think we’ve discussed how much I didn’t want you to ask me that question. Paperwork first, Foggy-bear.” She stroked his hair. “It’s the lawyer in me. Plus, a woman’s gotta keep her options open. I might want a guy who’s unattached.”

“We _would_ be unattached.” That was the point of the thing, right?

“What is it with you? Matt this, Matt that. Who cares about Matt? I’m pretty sure there’s a third person in that apartment and you love him to pieces. Even more than you love Matt, if that’s possible,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “And hey, nothing against it, I helped with the adoption, but when I’m ready to be a mom, I’ll let you know. Or possibly have myself institutionalized for temporary insanity.”

“You’d be a good mom,” he said. He had no idea where that came from, but he didn’t question it after the fact. “I mean, in general. You did all of that shit to help your boyfriend adopt a child with his law partner. You know what it meant for us.”

“And now you’ve gone all sappy on me. Mind passing out now?”

Foggy obliged.

He wasn’t much of a talker when he was hungover, and he didn’t say more than two words to Marci – which should she found to be a relief – or anyone else when he arrived in the office, half an hour later and blinded by the morning sun. Their latest intern had left the shades up again. “Ow!”

“What is it?” Matt asked from his office. He did not ask where Foggy had been or why he was late. He could probably smell the reasons.

“Damn sunlight.” He made it over to the window and lowered the blinds. “I need to borrow your sunglasses.”

“I don’t know if they actually work as sunglasses,” Matt replied, sounding a little amused. “I’m told they have a tint.”

“Well, I could use some rose-colored glasses,” Foggy replied, and leaned against the doorframe. There was a stack of braille documents neatly stacked and paperclipped on the edge of Matt’s desk, close to the door. “Is that what I think it is?”

Matt fidgeted. “Yeah.”

“Thanks, man.” Foggy picked them up and idly flipped through the unreadable white sheets and the printed versions under them, all signed where Foggy had put fuzzy stickers next to the line for Matt’s signature. “What changed your mind?”

“It wasn’t um, changed.” Matt was defensively making himself smaller behind the desk; if he had any sense of it anymore, he’d been hiding his eyes from Foggy. “I just had to convince some ... um, part of me that you’re not leaving tomorrow and I’m never going to see you again.”

“Some part – oh wait, is this creepy Pio shit? Did you name your – you know?”

“No, I did not name it,” Matt said, running his fingers along the edge of his desk. “And I also find Pio unsettling, but at least ... at least we know they agree on things.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “It’s really hard to um, disagree with your Black Sky.”

It took Foggy a moment to process all of that. It was something Matt never, _ever_ talked about, and Foggy had sort of put it in the back of his mind, because he was always more concerned about Juan’s weird friendship with the spirit that would have destroyed him and maybe the world. He didn’t even know if Matt’s Black Sky knew about him, but what else had Matt been tormented by? If Black Sky wanted Foggy to leave, it would have been an easy decision to make. If it wanted him to stay, then ... “I know you don’t like being asked about it, but does your – “

“We can never totally disagree,” Matt said. “We can just push each other harder in certain directions. Yes, it loves you, and it doesn’t want you to leave. And I agree with it.” Matt gave a wry smile. “But one us has to be the adult.”

“Oh,” Foggy said, which was a massive understatement and an all-around poor response to Matt’s pained admission. “Well, um, thanks?” He did mean it, but it came out pathetically. But Matt had an earnest expression on his face, like he wasn’t disappointed In the reply. “For fighting for me. If that’s what you did. I think that’s what you did.”

Matt, being the insufferable guy he was, didn’t respond with anything better than, “No problem.”

“And I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving Juan. The future is something we’ll figure out somehow, the same way we do every crazy decision we have to make – and trust me, I’ve made much crazier ones than this. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Matt said. “But it’s good to hear it again.”

 

 

*************************

Epilogue

Stepping into the Stark Tower elevators was always a bit of an awkward experience. Too much of it was touchscreens and he’d only worked with the Avengers as Daredevil half a dozen times, almost all in a capacity within Manhattan, so some of them didn’t know his real identity or knew Matt Murdock and hadn’t put two and two together. He supposed they were busy.

“Identify.”

“Matthew Murdock,” he told the machine.

“Matthew M. Murdock. Security Clearance: Civilian.”

Another man stepped into the elevator. “Sam Wilson. Eighteenth floor.”

“Matthew M. Murdock does not have clearance for – “

“Override code NTRMV-5,” Matt interrupted.

The machine chirped. “Matthew M. Murdock. Security Clearance: Level 3.”

The elevator doors closed and it rushed up, and Matt twiddled with his cane, trying to melt into the corner of the glass cage.

“So you’re Natasha’s boyfriend,” Wilson said. They had only met as Daredevil and Falcon. Oh, and one White Lotus afterparty, but they had bothbeen pretty drunk. Matt barely remembered it.

“I wouldn’t use the term ‘boyfriend.’” Matt supposed there was no hiding it. “Unless she does.”

“Smart move,” Sam said.

They stood in silence, Sam all business, his face craned up, probably to look at the numbers. Matt finally managed to stutter out, “Someone’s been, um, asking after you. To see how you’re doing.”

Sam turned and Matt knew he was taking a good, hard look at him. “My dad, right?”

“Um, yes?”

Sam huffed and turned away. “You know how many times I saw him when he was actually alive? Three. And the second one was to tell me he was dying, and the third was his deathbed. And now he’s got all the time in the world.” His body firmed up with tension. “You supposed to report back?”

“No. He just asked me to check on you, and I owed him a favor, so I said yes,” Matt said, relieved that there weren’t a whole lot of follow-up questions about _how_ he’d met Sam’s deceased father. “He seemed concerned.”

“What, is he watching me?” Sam demanded, and when Matt hesitated, he shook his head. “Sorry – this is a thing between me and my dad, obviously. Doesn’t mean I should let it spill onto you. I’m sure you’re just trying to do him a solid. So yeah, if you see him, tell him I’m doing okay. I’m working at the VA, I’ve got a good job with a pension, and I’m pals with Captain America. Things are good.”

“Good.”

Sam sighed and said under his breath, “ _Ninjas_.”

“Hey, you don’t know that. Not every blind person is a ninja.”

“Every blind person I _know_ is a ninja. And I have a bigger sample size than you’d expect.”

Matt shrugged. “That’s fair.” The elevator came to a halt. “This is your stop.”

“Hey, I know things too.” But Sam paused at the door. “If you do see my dad again – no offense – you can tell him that it’s nice that he asked, but I’m not visiting him. I hear the Spirit World is freakin’ crazy.”

Matt couldn’t contradict him.


	4. The Many Loves of Matt Murdock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filling various "we want to see Matt hook up with people" prompts.

When Daredevil showed up in her fire escape, halfway passed out and bleeding, Claire knew what it meant.

When Matt Murdock showed up at her doorstep in full daylight with casual clothes, his cane in one hand and a six pack in the other, she knew what that meant, too.

She didn’t recognize the brand. “There’s a new liquor shop across from the office,” Matt said. “I asked for a recommendation and the clerk lied the first two times. But for this one, he was telling the truth.” Matt preferred expensive, obscure beers in bottles. He was not a Bud light guy. To be fair, neither was Claire.

“I should have something better to do with my Saturdays than drink,” she said, opening the first bottle and passing him the opener. “Emphasis on _day_.”

“I know it’s day,” he said mock-defensively. “You’re free to kick me out.”

She had never taken him up on that repeated offer. “You want something to eat? Because I have nothing until Fresh Direct comes between four and six.”

“I’m good, thanks.” Matt set his cane in the corner and settled into her couch. “I needed to get out.”

“And how’s the exciting life of a vigilante?”

“This alleged vigilante spent last night doing paperwork,” he said. “We’re suing the American Taekwondo Association for not letting Juan participate in their tournament. They’re worried his prosthetic arm will fly off and hurt somebody. Or something. Or it gives him an unfair advantage. They haven’t been consistent in their reasoning.”

“They might be right.”

He scoffed at the idea. “The arm is plastic. And they put those kids in so much padding they couldn’t hurt each other if they tried. It’s like they’re sumo wrestling while being covered in pillows.”

“You know, some people might not have the appetite for pain and stitches that you do,” she said. His hairline was still swollen and red where she’d removed six stitches last week. “And you shouldn’t be trying to pass it on.”

“Please. The other kids can’t get a hit off on him,” Matt said, his face beaming with fatherly pride. Claire just wished it wasn’t about fighting, but then again, this was _Matt_ she was talking to.

“Please tell me you won’t turn that sweet little kid into a lethal weapon until he’s _at least_ eighteen.”

“Trust me, I’ve done all I can to discourage him,” Matt replied, and she didn’t doubt it. At least within Matt’s capabilities. “And that’s what kids do, right? They take strip mall martial arts, and every once in a while the teacher gives them a new stripe on their belt and charges us extra for it. I think Master Dan-san’s only mastery is in the school of business.”

“Is that where Juan is now?”

Matt shook his hand. “Foggy took him out to see his grandparents, eating all kinds of junk food I’m better off not smelling.”

“I take it you’re the ‘bad cop’ parent,” Claire said. “Not an easy thing to be.”

“He’s seen enough bad cops in his lifetime,” Matt said, because he always had to be so damn earnest.

It was also _adorable_.

“So. Are you seeing anyone?” he said when they were already in her bedroom, halfway undressed. It was a joke; he would certainly know if she was, unless she doused herself in antiseptics on the way home, and then he would be suspicious of _that,_ so ... Instead she just slapped him.

“Why do you even ask?”

“Um, politeness?”

Matt Murdock was really good at some things, but basically inept at others. Relationships fell into the latter category. “What about you?” Claire said. “Are you having any _additional_ extramarital affairs?”

His face twisted when he frowned. “I think Nat is in another dimension.”

“You can’t hear me rolling my eyes, can you?” she said as she climbed on top of him. Despite all of his muscles, he was really so much smaller than her, and he almost looked vulnerable in the light, as his eyes helplessly tried to find her, a reflex he couldn’t unlearn.

“No,” he said, as he kissed her collarbone. “But I had a guess.”

*************************

“So how was, um, Norseland?”

“Asgard,” Natasha corrected. It was two months later, and he wasn’t sure how long she had spent there. It could have been twelve hours for all he knew. She didn’t exactly send him updates. They went months without talking or knowing the general wellbeing of the other person. She was better at keeping tabs on him than he was on her (no surprise) and she had even sent him a text one to ask how he was doing after he’d almost shattered his knee and had to go to the Avengers tower for X-rays. “There was a lot of mead and eating meat off giant animal bones.”

“So like a Renaissance Faire?”

“More like a really expensive LARP,” she said. “And don’t tell Thor I said that, even though he won’t get it.” She pushed her toes into his chest for emphasis. “Oh, and I ran into one of your friends there.”

Matt wracked his brains for a moment. “Heimdall mentioned me?”

“White Lotus small talk, blah blah blah, he asked how you were doing,” she said. “I suppose this shouldn’t be weird, but he was black.”

“So?”

“I mean African-American black,” she clarified, because he was really thinking that the guy might just actually _be_ black. “They’re Norse gods. They’re all white. Except for him. And Loki, who I think is actually blue in his real skin. I’m not sure, actually. We didn’t have a long conversation.”

“Why would he be blue?”

“He’s a frost giant.”

“Oh, right,” Matt said. He took the offered foot and massaged it. Being nimble on her feet also meant she was brutal to them, especially when she jumped around in whatever footwear the mission required. “Sorry. I should have gotten that from context.”

“You have been to much stranger places than Thor’s homeworld.”

“I’m going to have to take your word on that,” he said as he kissed her toes, then worked his way down her ankles.

*************************

“You don’t have to go easy on me,” Matt told Jessica. “I’m tougher than I look.”

Five minutes later, after he remembered his name and where he was, he amended his statement.

 

*************************

And she had _nothing_ on Luke Cage.

*************************

“Look, I think it’s great that you got your groove back, but Jesus. You can’t go to court like that.”

Matt grimaced as he made his way to the coffee machine. Even though he was late to work, it was still too early for this. He washed his face and ran his hands through his greasy hair in the washroom, wishing he’d had time to stop home for a change of clothes and a shower. “I’ll go to Juan’s soccer practice for you.”

“You don’t need to make anything up to me,” Foggy said. “But you do need some actual makeup.”

Matt frowned. He knew his neck was bruised, but he didn’t know it was _that_ bruised. Fortunately, Foggy was used to covering up other injuries (for other reasons), and they were able to fill in an impromptu makeup session before their intern showed up for work.

“The Hulk did this to you? Or did you take out a gang in your street clothes?”

“A gentleman never tells,” Matt said, flinching at the application of foundation with a very insistently-applied brush. “And there’s more than one Hulk.”

“ _Dude_. She’s a prosecutor for the DA.”

“I made sure that we didn’t have any overlapping cases before we even spoke,” Matt replied. “I am a professional, Foggy.”

“You’re a professional _something_ ,” Foggy replied. “I just don’t want to say what because then we’ll need this stuff for me, and you can’t paint for shit.”

“I love you.”

“You don’t have to butter me up. You already bought the cow.”

Matt smiled. “You’re the one who said it.”

“Tell me you’re at least using protection. And by that I specifically mean body armor.”

“I’ll take it under consideration.”

 

Finis


	5. Juan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was not inspired by any request in particular.

“Dad,” Juan said, hesitation obvious in his voice, “can I ask you something?”

They were sitting in the back pew of the church. Matt liked to either make a hasty exit before the crowd or wait for them to disperse. His cane cut into their line, and the older regulars would always fret about accidentally tripping him, even though they never had. ‘Don’t put a stumbling block in front of the blind’ and all that. Or they would offer up their daughters (not currently present, of course) like sacrifices, and he was almost never in the mood for that. They said these things because they thought he was a different person than who he actually was. They would never hand out the phone numbers of their sweet, charming children to the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Of course,” Matt said. Juan was thrumming with nervous energy; whatever it was, he’d needed to work himself up to this over the course of the service. “You can ask me anything.”

“Do you really believe in all this?”

The thing that took Matt back the most was that it wasn’t said in a sacrilegious tone. Juan was twelve now, more than old enough to be questioning the belief system in which he was raised, and going to a Catholic day school certainly didn’t help.

“What makes you think I don’t?” Matt said, trying to sound open. “I’m not here for the view.” He did remember the altar being pretty, with lots of gold, and the murals on the wall. He didn’t know if they were still in good condition.

“Do you think the Eucharist is real?”

Ah. A far more technical question. “I don’t know if it is. I’ve experienced enough strange things to know that I don’t know everything. But I think I do like the idea that Christ comes down to earth in some kind of tangible way. Something you can touch and taste.”

“But you don’t take Communion every week.”

“Sometimes I haven’t confessed,” Matt said. “Look, ultimately, you can believe whatever you want. But when you choose to believe in something, anything, as long as it doesn’t harm others, you should take it very seriously. It gives it more meaning. So when I feel like I’m a sinner, and I’m not clean for the Body of Christ, I don’t take Communion. I have to show the Host respect.”

“Even if it’s not real.”

He nodded. “Even if it’s not real. The way you think and the way you act – those things mold you over time. Then can determine what kind of person you become. That’s more important than whether wafers become flesh or they stay wafers.” He paused, and he could tell from Juan’s body language that he needed more. “When I was your age, I _hated_ Mass.”

“Dad!”

But he just grinned. “It’s true. I was blind, my dad had been murdered, and Stick had just left me. I was lonely, and I had school every day, including some Saturdays when I had a special tutor to read me my textbooks, so when Sunday came, I just wanted to stay in bed and sleep. And the nuns were nice about a lot of things because they thought I was frail and helpless, but when it was time for Mass, they didn’t accept _any_ excuses. And there was a lot more kneeling back then, or it seemed like it. Once I had the flu and it threw off my senses so I couldn’t keep my head up straight, but when I started to topple one of them would just strike me with a yardstick.” At Juan’s gasp, he added, “Not hard. To me it was like getting hit with a feather. But they didn’t know that. So after I aged out, I stopped going.”

“But you came back.”

Matt nodded. “When I was thinking about suiting up for the first time, before Daredevil had a name, I realized I might need to square some things with G-d. Check to see if I was on the right path. And then, when I needed the Church, it was there for me. No one ever told me I was evil, even when I said I thought I had the Devil inside me, or when I found out that yes, I did have a spirit inside me, even if it wasn’t what I thought it was. And when I did bad things, I was always offered forgiveness. So I guess you could say that even if I don’t always believe every bit of the liturgy, the Church has earned my respect.”

“Okay,” Juan said, and fell silent, looking down instead of at Matt. For not the first time, Matt wondered what he looked like. Foggy said his skin was darker than theirs, and when his hair got long enough, it curled at the ends.

Since Juan didn’t jump up, Matt knew there was more. “What do you believe?”

“If the bread becomes the Body of Christ, why can’t Pio tell there’s another spirit present?”

Ah, there was a question he wasn’t qualified to answer. “Did you ask him if he did?”

“He said he can’t tell. But I can’t, you know, ask in class. About this.”

“I’m not really qualified to answer, either,” Matt admitted, “but Pio’s opinion is just an opinion, isn’t it? He’s like you – he’s fallible. He’s not omniscient.” He leaned over. “He isn’t, right?”

“Dad – “

“Because I could use tomorrow’s lotto numbers.”

“Dad! Gambling is supposed to be a sin.”

“It wouldn’t be gambling if we _knew_ the numbers. It’s only gambling if you’re guessing.” He slapped him on the back. “Let’s go before we commit some more blasphemy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kovvu did an excellent piece of fanart of airbender Matt! [Check it out on Tumblr.](http://devilofmidtownwest.tumblr.com/post/140262629399/kovvu-daredevil-x-atla-commission-for)


	6. Karen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this will be the last update to this AU. It really depends on how commentors feel and how season 2 goes. So sound off! And as always, thanks for reading!

It took Karen three coffees to work herself up to this.

She did not remember a Starbucks across the street from Matt’s apartment, but Hell’s Kitchen was not the same. A little cleaner, a little neater, a little friendlier, and a sticker in the window of most shops with an adorable version of the Daredevil logo to indicate how they felt about their patron devil.

She wondered how Matt felt about that, if he even knew about them. She was still a little unclear on that aspect of his powers. He probably _did_ know about the cheaply-made merchandise sold at stands with other New York memorabilia – it seemed like something Foggy would have told him about. She paused at a stand selling iPhone cases, bongs, and terrible pre-framed photography of the cityscape to touch the fuzzy Daredevil keychain doll. It was the scratchy kind of fabric, the bottom-barrel stuff, but it was cute. There was also a red knit cap with devil horns for ten bucks, freshly made in China, next to another one with Captain America wings. She would have bought it, but she didn’t have any money, and she thought the gift might come off the wrong way.

Despite not having spoken to Matt or Foggy in years, she still knew Matt’s address, or what she hoped was still his address. Walking into the office would have been a surer bet – she did check, and they hadn’t moved – but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t face both of them, at once, and maybe a new receptionist, a better replacement for an unpredictable, flighty mess like her.

Aside from the installation of an elevator, nothing was different about the apartment. The intercom didn’t work despite the appearance of numerous repairs and if you jiggled the door just the right way, it came loose.

She doubted herself all the way up the elevator. By the time it reached the sixth floor, she could barely breathe, and she was wondering which would be a better outcome – him still living there, or someone else being there and her having a chance to walk away again. It didn’t help that she hadn’t eaten today and her hands were shaking when she rang the doorbell.

“Hello?” said a very slightly accented, unfamiliar voice on the other side of the door, which did not open.

“Um, excuse me,” she stammered. “I’m looking for Matt Murdock. Does he still live here?”

“Who are you?”

“Karen. Karen Paige. I used to – I used to work for Nelson and Murdock. I was just in the city, and I wanted to stop in and say hi.” That last part was a lie, but if Matt wasn’t there, he couldn’t call her on it. If what Foggy said about Matt hearing lies was true or not.

The door opened slightly, only enough for the chain on the side to go taught, taut and a dark-haired teenager was hiding behind it. “Prove it.”

“Um, okay.” She flipped through her phone. It took a long time to cycle back to pictures from over seven years ago, but she had never had the courage to delete them. “Here.” She held up a picture of her and Matt – taken by Foggy – at Josie’s. It was Halloween, and Matt was wearing a pirate hat.

The kid gave her a once-over, then said, “Okay. But I’m calling dad right now.” He shut the door so he could undo the chain, then opened it for her, but he was already on his phone, talking to his dad – Matt, apparently – in rapid Spanish. Her skills were too rusty to follow it, but she did hear her name twice before he hung up. “Sorry. Dad’s really strict about letting strangers into the apartment.”

“That’s a good policy.”

“He’s in arbitration. He’ll be back in an hour, maybe less,” he said, walking to the kitchen area. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Yeah, um, I’ll take some water,” she said, feeling unprotected in this new environment. It was definitely Matt’s apartment – his spare cane was in the corner next to the doorway, folded up and hanging from the coat rack, and little curiosities of a blind man’s habits were still there: his salt and pepper shakers were from different sets with different shapes, there was masking tape on the floor to show where the chairs should go, and the bookshelf was filled with white, spiral-bound tomes of what had to be braille books, but just about everything else was different. For one thing, the lights were on (and working) and there was color everywhere – from the placemats on the kitchen table to art and posters on the walls. The fridge was covered in magnets, the furniture was a bit askew, and some things even matched. There were also walls up to create a second room off the main one, obviously a kid’s room from the amount of peeling stickers posted on the door.

Speaking of the kid – which wasn’t fair, he was definitely at least 13 – he handed her a glass of water. “I’m Juan,” he said. His accent wasn’t thick but it was definitely strongly Latin American. “Matt’s my dad.”

Karen tried to do the math in her head on that. Juan must have noticed because he rolled his eyes. “Matt’s my _adoptive_ dad.”

“I’m sorry, I – “

“I don’t look like him. I know.” But he was growing less suspicious of her, so that was good. He was wearing a sweatshirt with the word REGIS on it, and while one hand was stuffed in his pocket, the other arm was hanging strangely under the fabric. “So when did you work for him?”

“Oh, um, when he started the practice. I was their first client, actually. I couldn’t pay them, so I did some free work for them, and they hired me.”

“Oh.” Juan’s face lightened a little. “You’re the woman in that picture.”

“What picture?”

He blushed. “The one in Uncle Foggy’s office. There’s a picture of the three of you. Uncle Foggy has a lot of pictures so I never thought to ask who it was.”

“So Foggy’s your uncle?”

He shrugged. “Foggy’s my other dad. He used to live here, when I was younger, before I could be adopted. They said that Matt couldn’t adopt me alone because he’s blind, and that’s discrimination, but sometimes the law isn’t as fair as it should be.”

“That’s certainly true,” Karen said, still wrapping her head around the idea that Matt and Foggy had adopted _a kid together_. Had they been a couple? And why weren’t they now? “But he doesn’t live here anymore?”

“Marci wouldn’t marry him if he wasn’t living with her. Which is fair, I guess.” He didn’t sound too pleased with the arrangement, but that was probably what he was told to think about it.

“Marci Stahl?”

He nodded. “She’s okay. She can be really mean to other people but she’s never been mean to me. And she helped them with the adoption and prevented me from being deported, so that was pretty cool of her.” He looked Karen in the eyes. “Her cooking _sucks_ though.”

Karen giggled. “She didn’t seem like much of a chef to me.” She had only seen Marci half a dozen times, then watched Foggy fall apart when she dumped him after Matt disappeared. To be fair, Karen had sort of dumped him too, abandoning him when he needed her most and fleeing to the other side of the country, and thinking about it now, the guilt still burned inside her. “So they’re dating?”

“They’re engaged.” Juan sounded carefully neutral on the subject, probably because a complete stranger had just showed up in his home when he was alone, claiming to know his dad (and other dad), and not given a good reason for being here. “I think if she was as mean as everyone says she is, Dad would never let Uncle Foggy marry her.”

“If I remember your dad correctly, that’s probably true,” Karen said.

There was an awkward silence when she realized it wouldn’t be appropriate to quiz Juan on his parents’ life and Juan probably had no idea what to ask her. Eventually he did say, “Do you want to play video games?”

“Yeah. That sounds great.”

The living room area did have a widescreen TV and a complex setup for gaming. After he handed her a controller, he removed his sweatshirt and picked something up from the floor and attached it to his elbow. She had thought it was some weird kind of game controller, and in a way it was, but she was pretty proud of not gasping very loudly when she saw it was a prosthetic arm because he didn’t have a right hand.

Why Matt and Foggy had adopted this kid became just a little bit clearer.

Matt made his appearance twenty minutes and many curses in Spanish later, huffing slightly, his suit somewhat disheveled, as if he had just run all the way home and up five flights of stairs, only to come to a screeching stop in his own doorway, cane in one hand and briefcase in the other, suddenly unsure of what to do with himself.

“Karen.”

“Matt.”

He’d changed and he hadn’t. He looked more professional, but he’d always worn nice clothes. There were bags under his eyes and just the beginning of crow’s feet around them, him looking very much the part of a stressed, overworked lawyer and single dad. There were band-aids over the knuckles of his left hand, proving some other things hadn’t changed, either.

She realized she’d never actually spoken to him about the Devil. It didn’t come up in any of their phone or Skype conversations during his long recovery. It never seemed appropriate. But he _must_ know that she knew, right?

He was the one with the courage to break through the layers of uncomfortable silence. “It’s um, good to see you.”

“Yeah.” Really, that was all she could muster. “I was just passing through and I thought maybe – “ She stopped herself. “Wait. I can’t lie to you, can I?”

He shrugged uncomfortably. “I won’t call you on it. If I did that, I wouldn’t have anyone still speaking to me.” He stepped into his own apartment and put his cane in the corner like old times. “Everybody lies. They have their reasons.” He looked in Juan’s direction as he approached. “How was your day?”

“Okay.”

“How’d your trigonometry test go?”

“Pretty good, I think. Father Clarence is still a jerk, though.”

“Hey. What did we say about our elders?”

“You also told me to tell the truth.”

This was an old pattern. Matt put his hand on Juan’s head and twisted it to indicate Juan should turn around. “Homework. Go do it.”

Juan made an exaggerated groan but he did go to his room and angrily shut the door, which made Matt smile. “I’m told he’s supposed to be like this.”

G-d, could Matt get more adorable? “He seems like a nice kid. How did you, um – “

“It’s a long story,” he said. He was still smiling, but she knew it probably wasn’t a funny story. “Can I get you something? Did he get you something? Because he was supposed to.”

“He did.”

“We were just going to eat leftovers, but we could get take out,” Matt suggested as he set his briefcase down. “Juan will probably be thrilled. Oh, and Foggy wants to see you. I couldn’t exactly keep it from him, but I figured that if you wanted to see us at once, you’d have come to the office.”

“Yeah, um ...” She didn’t have a good explanation for that, really. “I couldn’t ... I just couldn’t walk in there. I know it sounds stupid, but I have this picture in my mind – “

“I know,” Matt said, and it didn’t sound like he was being facetious. “A lot of time has passed. And we do have a new paint job. I’m told it looks nice.” He had a way of disarming guests and putting them at ease. He hadn’t lost any of his charm with time. “If it’s okay, Foggy will want to see you – “

“I know, it’s just – I haven’t exactly been returning his calls.”

“He’s been calling you?”

“Not in a while. Years. But I still feel bad about it.” She looked up, and Matt was nodding. He still looked like he didn’t know quite what to do with his hands. “I mean, I moved away, and we kept in touch, and you and I talked, but I didn’t know – you put this whole life together, with a thriving law practice – “

“Thriving is a very strong word for how we’re doing.”

“ – and a kid, you adopted a kid together and I didn’t even know that, I don’t even know if you guys – wait, were you guys _together_ together? Can I ask that?”

“You can ask me whatever you want,” he said, and probably meant it. “And no, we weren’t. Child Protective Services just wouldn’t let me adopt as a single dad with a disability, so Foggy stepped in. It was ... amazing. Of him.”

“Juan said he’s engaged to Marci. I just guessed it was Marci Stahl.”

“Yeah.” He said it like he was just offering up ordinary information, like an address or something. “He’s very happy. All he has to do now is convert to Judaism and tell Marci about Daredevil and we’re all good.”

“Why does she have to – wait, what?”

“Her parents are surprisingly traditional about certain things.” He put the kettle on, maybe for something to do. “He has to go to classes and then he has to be baptized in a pool, but it’s not called that.”

“It’s called a mikvah.” She shrugged. “Half of my dorm in college was Jewish.”

“So that. The mikvah thing. He has to do that. I don’t think Marci’s going to hold him to anything else, but if her parents are going to pay for the wedding, that’s the deal.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“It’s his life. Foggy’s met a Norse god and he’s never been budged out of anything other than being aggressively agnostic. As long as it makes him happy, he can do what he likes.”

“That’s very progressive of you.”

“Yeah, well – I’m no saint.” And there were a million different ways to interpret what he meant by that. Karen had seen footage of the Daredevil costume in the news and watched it change over the years, but she still couldn’t picture him in it, not even when he was standing right in front of her. Also, she wondered if he knew that the band-aids on his hand had knock-off pictures from the Thor cartoon on them.

Her train of thought – and his, wherever it was going, was interrupted by his phone. “ _Foggy. Foggy. Foggy_.”

“So, dinner? We all need to eat,” he asked as he answered the phone. “Hey. Yeah, Karen’s here. Hold on.” He put the phone to his chest. “Well?”

She couldn’t say no, could she? And Foggy deserved to see her far more than Matt. “Yes.”

“She said yes,” Matt said into his phone. “Fine, we’ll – yeah, okay, we’ll be there.” He tapped on his phone three times to end the call. “There’s this Italian place that’s only still in business because we helped the owner keep his liquor license. They, uh, give us a good deal there. Also I hid in their dumpster once, but they don’t know that. Don’t get the fish.” He raised his voice. “Juan, what do you want from Jimmy’s?”

“Eggplant parm with spaghetti on the side,” Juan shouted back.

“We don’t have to leave him behind,” Karen said.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure he’d prefer playing Fallout 5 while he’s supposed to be doing his homework to listening to his dads share their war stories,” he said, using the phrase ‘his dads’ so casually he must have said it a hundred times. “Am I right?” he shouted.

“I’m going to study!” Juan said. “Just go, Dad!”

It was so strange, walking with Matt again. Just before he’d disappeared, she’d fallen into a bit of rhythm with him – not nearly on the level that he had with Foggy, but enough that she knew to walk on his left side so he could keep a hand lightly gracing her elbow as his cane twanged against the pavement. All while she couldn’t get images of Daredevil jumping headfirst off buildings or fighting off a slime monster while riding on the Hulk’s back out of her head.

“I’ve seen footage of you on the internet,” she said. “It’s, um, kind of scary.”

“Yeah, Foggy had to stop watching the footage. It was going to give him a heart attack.”

“Are any of those Daredevil Twitter accounts yo – “

“No.” He frowned. “But I think Tony’s is. Or his social media person is very good at sounding like him.”

Seeing Foggy was more difficult than seeing Matt in a way, because she knew he could _see_ her, and in a way she could understand, and he was still warm and affectionate and hugged her and it made her feel like she was all skin and bones, which was true. He hadn’t changed much, either – he was maybe a little more muscular, but still a bit on the heavy side, but he was wearing green, which she’d never seen him wear. It took a lot of courage to wear a green suit in New York.

“It’s so, so good to see you,” he said, definitely getting a little choked up and trying to hide it. “When did you get in? How long are you staying? Do you need a place? Please don’t tell me you’re staying at one of those sketchy hotels where they have to buzz you in. You’ll get bedbugs and have to burn all your clothing – “

“Foggy,” Matt said, for which Karen was very grateful. “She just got here. Let her eat first.”

This was a small mercy and Karen took it. The atmosphere in the restaurant was warm and Matt and Foggy had a wealth of interesting stories to share with her.

“ – and then Matt, who’s an Avenger at this point – “

“ _You’re_ practically an Avenger,” Matt defended. “Anyone who’s been to a Stark afterparty is an Avenger. I think half of midtown are Avengers.”

“You’ve been to a Stark afterparty?” Karen asked, very eager to keep the attention off her own life, and grateful to not have to work too hard at it.

“Well, Stark wasn’t there,” Foggy clarified. “He was at the main party, but that wasn’t that exclusive. Though I had a lot of fun making up different reasons as to why we knew Tony Stark. Because, you know, we couldn’t actually say. Then I just got bored and starting telling people we were suing him.”

“And everyone believed us,” Matt said. “Marci’s was the one actually suing him and she wasn’t even there.”

“No, they’d settled at that point,” Foggy said, and leaned into Karen and whispered, “Sexual harassment.”

“Of course.”

“It was an old case. He’s toned that way down,” Foggy said. “Wait, why am I defending Tony Stark?”

“Because he made half of Juan’s arms _and_ he let you drink his alcohol.”

“Right. That. We could still sue him for being prejudiced against ninjas.”

Matt scoffed. “He’s all talk.”

“That’s because he’s afraid of you!” Foggy said, then whispered to Karen as if Matt couldn’t hear. “Tony is scared of ninjas.”

Karen looked at Matt. “Did you beat up Tony Stark?”

“He just has a blanket policy.”

“That’s not an answer,” Foggy pointed out, and they descended into a pit of giggles.

Aside from a few scattered questions, they didn’t ask her a single important thing about where she’d been or what she was up to, and she didn’t offer.

“You can stay at my place,” Matt said on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. He hadn’t asked her if she needed a place.

“Hey! Marci and I have a very comfortable couch, too,” Foggy said. “And her bark is worse than her bite. And so is her dog’s.”

“It is a nice dog,” Matt said, but Karen declined Foggy’s offer, and he had a bus to catch to take him across town.

As they walked back to Matt’s apartment, his demeanor slowly changed as he grew quieter and more serious. He paused in front of the steps to the building. “Listen, Karen – I haven’t asked you anything about why you’re here because I’m guessing you don’t want me to ask.”

She didn’t say anything. That was confirmation enough.

“You don’t have to tell me anything. It’s not my business unless you want me to be involved. But I do get a lot from smell.” He swallowed, and pointed to the door. “I have a teenage son. I don’t want to be rude, but if you’re going to stay with us, you absolutely, positively cannot bring anything illegal into the house.” He didn’t specify what he was talking about, but he didn’t need to. “So do whatever you need to do, and come back, and I’ll buzz you in, and we won’t discuss it again unless you want to. But I cannot budge on this.”

She didn’t have a lot on her. She looked at her feet and said, “Okay.”

“I would really like you to stay. I’m not trying to be mean.”

“I get it. You’re a dad.” She managed to smile. “You sound like you’re a really good dad.” She needed to hold it together. She’d forgotten how much she could wither under the blank stare his red glasses provided. “I’ll be back in a bit, okay?”

“Okay.” Matt softened immediately. “I’m glad you came back to the city.”

She didn’t need to have some crazy superpower to know he wasn’t lying.

*************************

They didn’t talk about it when she came back an hour later, after her initial crest had passed. They didn’t talk about it in the morning before Juan left for school and Matt went to work. He invited her to come to noonday Mass with her, which she declined. He asked her if she needed anything in the way or food or supplies for the apartment and left. And he was so agonizingly polite about all of it.

It struck her as an unfortunate coincidence that if she wanted to score in Hell’s Kitchen, Matt was probably the most knowledgeable person in the city about finding a dealer on short notice. She could probably go another day, but it would be shaky. She needed to save her remaining cash.

She was warm and safe and she didn’t know how to kill the time and it was driving her crazy, so for the first time since she was a child, Karen Paige went to church.

It was a rushed Mass for people spending their precious lunch break in church on a weekday, but it was still the full service, with the standing up and sitting down and bowing. There were only five people who weren’t clergy, and three of them were old women who managed to still look penitent while whispering rather obviously about her when she tried to sneak into the pew next to Matt. Matt acknowledged her with one of his firm smiles, with his lips pursed together, but he was rather serious about the service, with his own rosary and everything. She remembered him being more culturally than religiously Catholic, but he’d also lived in a monastery since then, so that had probably changed things.

At the end, Matt didn’t hop up or even unfold his cane. “I don’t want to be assaulted by them,” he said, indicating the other regulars. “And I’m assuming you don’t, either.”

“No.”

It was a nice church. A little dark and gloomy maybe, but it was homey because of its age. The tall ceiling and the width of the stone room, built to house much larger crowds in a bygone era for Hell’s Kitchen, made her feel small, but also protected. She could understand why Matt would choose to spend time here.

“I like it here,” he said, making her wonder not for the first time if he read minds, too. “I like the smells. The stonework keeps them in and muffles the outside noise in a way that plaster and concrete doesn’t. I can hear more from my apartment than I can from here.”

The abbreviated version of an explanation of his powers she got from Foggy in those harried few days when they were debating what to do with Matt’s suit before they reported him missing was something about using his other senses, which were extremely heightened in the absence of sight. She supposed now that meant that the key ones were probably sound and smell, and that’s what the church as a building offered him. He could smell long-burned incense leaving their traces in the dust and cobwebs but he couldn’t see her expression. Foggy also said it was the only possible explanation for why he was willing to wear such a ridiculous red jumpsuit in public.

He took his right arm out of the suit jacket and rolled up the sleeve. They were just fading scars, but there was a clear, familiar line of track marks, the kind that you would have to put makeup over for a job interview, or any other social event where you might be judged. The kind that they checked for when you went to donate blood.

“I’m scared of needles,” she said. “I know it seems silly – “

“It doesn’t.” He put his arm back in the jacket and looked forward, so his very accusing glasses weren’t facing her. “I know it’s different. I never willingly took anything. The drugs were just a means of control. And they’re also why I don’t remember a lot of that ... time. For which I’m grateful. But I do remember what it was like to go up and down, and a little of what it was like to stop. Foggy said I was in a straightjacket and they were worried I would die from a stroke. I kept smashing my head against the wall. Knocked myself out a couple times. That I don’t remember at all.” He grinned, just a little. “Also, I think I broke Clint Barton’s nose. He’s never called me on it, but Foggy said I did.”

“Clint’s the - ?”

“The bow and arrow guy.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t know who he was, either. I mean, after. Or at all. So don’t feel bad. He gets it a lot.”

“Oh.” She did smile a little at that, if only for a moment. “Did you tell Foggy?”

“About what?”

“About the drugs. About whatever else you’ve figured out.”

“I tell him everything.”

“How did he – what did he say?”

“He had the same feeling I did about the apartment rules. He’s Juan’s dad, too. His name is on the adoption papers. But aside from that – I don’t think he knows what to do. If he did he would have said something to you last night. But he wants to help.”

“You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Nobody’s comparing notes,” he said. “You came to us for help. You had no other reason to knock on my door. So let us help you.” He fiddled with the cane folded up in his hands. “Or at least think about it.”

“Okay,” she said. “On the second thing.”

*************************

Matt didn’t push her any further. He went back to work and she went back to his apartment. Juan was home from school first, as scheduled. He was a nicer kid this time around, but very, _very_ protective of his dad (and he meant Matt) and Karen wondered what Matt had told him about her. There were a lot of secrets that not everyone was on the same page about.

He did agree to give her a grant tour of his bedroom. He might have been a teenager, but he had yet to paint it black and put up blacklight posters everywhere. There were still toys visible, particularly the Avengers action figures lined up on the shelf above his desk, most of them missing their original weapons and some of their paint.

“Dad _hates_ that one,” he said, probably without thinking, when she instinctively picked up the Daredevil toy. Its proportions were ... unrealistic to the human figure. “I only have it because it bugs him.” But one of the horns was missing, and it did seem like it had seen its fair share of play over the years.

The photos above his desk were the usual: Juan with both his dads, Juan with Foggy’s parents, with some kids his age, one holding a trophy while wearing a martial arts uniform, one with Claire, and a couple shots with the Avengers (there were noticeably none of Daredevil). Above that were two group shots of a Latin American family in different locations.

“That’s me,” Juan answered her unasked question as he pointed to the little kid almost hidden behind his mother’s legs. He was at most four or five in the shot and he had both his arms. He pointed out his parents and his sisters and brother and a few cousins. “They’re gone now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t have anything to do with it,” Juan said. He sounded like he’d heard that statement many times, but he wasn’t mad at her for it, either.

“How did you come to America?”

She should have known before she asked that that was a bad question. Juan glared at her. “We don’t talk about it with anyone.”

“I’m sorry. For real this time,” she backtracked. “Your dad – dads – got me out of trouble too. They saved my life.”

While he didn’t look skeptical, his expression conveyed that whatever bad shit she had been through in her life, he had probably been through worse.

Matt was too perceptive for his own good. “Did Juan say something to you?” he asked when they went out for groceries. Juan was doing homework, and Foggy was at a conversion class.

“Not really,” she said. She wondered if that was a lie or not. “I just – I shouldn’t ask, but how did he come into this country?”

“He was trafficked,” Matt said, completely openly. “He saw his entire village gunned down before they took him. So yeah, he doesn’t want to talk about it. But I can understand why it’s hard not to ask. I’m told he doesn’t exactly look like me. His accent’s gone down naturally over the years, but we haven’t made work on it. It’s his heritage.”

“I’ve forgotten most of my Spanish,” she admitted. “I know, in California, I should have – well, I wasn’t in those communities.”

“Trust me, neither of us hold a candle to Foggy. I’ve lost count of how many languages he knows. I stopped after six. The man is a genius.” He pulled a box off the shelf and smelled it. “And people think I keep him around to be the pretty face of the business.”

“I’m sure he’d love to hear you say that.”

“He’s heard it enough times.”

*************************

Foggy came over for dinner. He’d lived in the apartment for years, so he was hardly a guest, and he was a much better cook than Matt, or so he said (and Juan wholeheartedly agreed while Matt grumbled). Apparently Matt’s super senses resulted in his preference for insanely expensive organic, bland food. Also, he was trying his best to hold to his promise to be a vegetarian.

“It’s an air – um, thing. It’s a thing,” Foggy said as he stood over the stove. “Matt. Help?”

“Let’s put it under the general category of ninja things for now,” Matt said. “I have a teacher and he’s very insistent on it. So I’m giving it a try.”

“Yeah, you’ll have to find something new to give up for Lent,” Foggy said. “And it can’t be coffee again, all right? Because that was a _disaster_.”

Karen giggled but Matt kept a straight face. “I won’t dispute that.”

After dinner, Foggy attempted to help Juan with his homework, but the math was getting a little beyond what he could handle. Karen announced that she needed to go out and get some air, which wasn’t technically a lie, though it did take her two hours to get that air, or find the air she was looking for, and after that, she lost track of time entirely.

She couldn’t tell how long she’d been on that ratty couch when the door burst open, and she have excepted the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen – the old one, in the old black suit, the one she knew best – to start cracking skulls and taking names. But it was just Matt, the guy in a black shirt and camo pants, wielding his cane like a wizard’s staff as he pushed the man at the door into the stairs, and it looked like he didn’t even have to touch him to do it. He even still had his glasses on.

“Karen,” Matt said as he stepped over the unconscious drifter on the rug. There was nothing accusatory in his tone. He held out his free hand. “Come on. You can’t stay here.”

“Why not?” She knew her voice was slurred. She didn’t know a lot else.

He managed a smile. “If for no other reason, because of the things I can smell on that couch.” When that wasn’t enough, he added, “The cops raid this place all the time. You’ll get arrested in a sweep.”

She didn’t want to say, _Maybe they’ll just kill me this time_. Maybe it would be better of dying of embarrassment right here and now. But Matt just kept nudging her, gently, in the shoulder. “Karen.” He didn’t want to pick her up wholesale without her permission, though he definitely could. “I can get Foggy, if you want.”

“No.” That would make it worse. She could sort of picture Matt here, but not Foggy, even though he would know. Matt said he told him everything. “No. Okay.”

He took her arm, pressing a finger into her shoulder as he did, and let her lift herself up with his cane on the other side. “Your pulse is too fast and your heartrate is too slow. We’re going to the hospital.”

“No.”

He didn’t respond to her. It took some physical negotiating to get her out the door. Her legs were not completely cooperating and her head was still spinny. The shock of cold air assailed her senses and everything shut down.

*************************

When she woke up in the ER, Foggy was dozing in the chair next to her. It didn’t take much movement on her part to wake him.

“Hey.” He stood and put his hand over hers. “How are you?”

She didn’t answer him. She wanted to hide under her covers, but that would probably disturb the oxygen mask and cause all kinds of alarms to sound. She was crying already, but she didn’t really know why.

“The doctor said it was a mild overdose. Probably wouldn’t have killed you. But the naloxone helped a lot.”

She wanted to ask how Matt found her, but that was really a stupid question.

“I sent Matt home. One of us has to go to work tomorrow. And he hates hospitals. The smells really irritate him.” He sighed, and sat down on her bed. “You know you have to go into a program. You’ll die if you don’t. Matt and I – we’ve had a lot of clients with problems. We must know half the places in the state that will take you. Places more sophisticated than NarcAnon.” When she still didn’t answer him, he looked at the ceiling. “I went through this once with Matt. Did he tell you?”

She nodded.

“And he doesn’t really remember. He knows he doesn’t. When they found him, he was a zombie. He didn’t speak for months. We were afraid he would never come back. There was so much damage ...” He was trying not to get choked up. “His kidnappers made him a monster. Even when he had recovered enough to understand what happened, he didn’t know how to live with himself. I think the only reason he didn’t commit suicide was because he was so Catholic. And even after all of the confession, and forgiveness, and therapy, and medication, and time healing all wounds and that nonsense, there are still days where he gets ... well, he says it’s like being itchy. Under his skin. He wants something but he can’t describe what it is. We never officially told him what they gave him, so he couldn’t go out and try to find it on the streets.” He looked back at her. “I don’t want to go through that again with you. But I will. And Matt won’t have to see it, but he’ll know, way more than I can, what your body’s going through.”

“Why are you helping me?” she had to ask as she pulled her oxygen mask down. “We barely know each other more.”

“You knew that we would,” Foggy answered. “That’s why you came back to the city, right? That’s what Matt said, and he’s not technically a mind reader, but he’s pretty close.”

Karen couldn’t deny it, so she said nothing. Foggy accepted that as an answer.

*************************

She was released that afternoon. Foggy took her back to Matt’s place and stayed with her until Matt came back from work. They didn’t ask anything of her except what she needed – food, water, and rest. And a shower, in a tub that now had adorable Spider-man curtains.

Juan went to a friend’s house for dinner after SAT tutoring, so it was just Karen, Foggy, and Matt around his kitchen table. Foggy, who was a good cook, made fish, and for Matt, stir-fried tofu.

“So,” Matt said after she’d eaten a good amount of the food on her plate. “Do you want to tell us what happened?”

She knew it was coming, but she wasn’t prepared. “I – I don’t think I can go over everything. There’s a lot.” But they deserved it, every word of it. “After I went to LA, I tried to get some acting jobs – well, you know how that goes. I waited a lot of tables, did some screen tests, overpaid for headshots. All of the offers were for ... films I didn’t want to be part of.” Being the polite lawyers they were, neither Matt nor Foggy asked her to specify. “Everyone there was doing something. I had an apartment with four women and two of them were doing cocaine with their directors and one was doing speed. It was all very casual, you know? It’s not like in school, where they tell you one snort is going to get you super addicted. It takes longer. People were doing it and it didn’t seem to hurt them in the long run. So I did a little. It pepped me up before work. It made the day easier to get through. But it was expensive so ... when I moved out of LA, I quit. I couldn’t stand being hyped up all day, crashing at night. So I went to the north, to this cult in the forest. There were beautiful redwoods and we mostly did weed. It was all new age hippies and a few old-schoolers whose brains barely worked, but it was really welcoming. The people were nice. They didn’t ask any questions I didn’t want to answer. They called me Summer, because of my hair color. I dated a guy named Mud. It was a new thing, you know? Living in the woods, growing marijuana for sale, being positive all the time. It was therapeutic.” He looked at her hands, away from Foggy’s supportive expression and Matt’s accusatory sunglasses. She knew he couldn’t help it.

“And then I ran out of money again, and I went home to Wisconsin, and my mom was sick. I didn’t even know – I hadn’t spoken to her since college. We never got along. But she had cancer and I had nowhere to go, so I stayed. But she hadn’t changed that much, even though she was dying. It was still really hard to be around her. She said – we both said things that we couldn’t take back. But I needed to be in the house all the time, to help her. And she had prescription painkillers that she wasn’t using, some anti-anxiety drugs. She wasn’t capable of telling if anything went missing. She couldn’t even count her own pills. I had to lay them out for her.” She stopped to take a deep breath. “When she died, all I could think about was how I was going to get more pills. When I ran out I hocked some of her stuff. Stuff that no one wanted. But street drugs were cheaper. But when I was high I didn’t have to feel anything. I didn’t have to feel sad about anything. Not my mother dying, or failing to be anybody in my life, or running away from New York.”

“You didn’t run away,” Foggy said. “Everyone needed space when Matt disappeared. Nobody blames you for that. You know that, right? You’re not to blame for anything that went down there.”

She nodded. Her voice cracked when the tears started. “I still feel bad though – but that wasn’t it. It was – “ She gasped with a sob. “You guys are still my lawyers, right?”

Matt sat up. “If you need us to be. Karen, what happened?”

“Wesley,” she said. “I killed him.”

“Who’s – “

But Matt put his hand up to interrupt Foggy. “He worked for Fisk. He hired us on retainer.”

“I just assumed – “

“What, that Daredevil took him out?” Matt replied. “No. Nobu died in a fight, Fisk killed the Russians and Leland Owsley, but James Wesley’s murder was never solved. Hoffman didn’t know who did it and neither did anyone else who testified.”

“Because I shot him in the chest,” she said. “Six times. I used every bullet.” Now that they hadn’t fled from her, or responded angrily, she had a little more strength for this. And saying it felt _good_ at the same time that it felt _awful_. “Right before Ben died, Wesley kidnapped me. He put a gun on the table and told me he was going to kill me or blackmail me to work for him. He got distracted and – I don’t know, I picked up the gun, and I started firing. It was like it wasn’t me in that body. I wasn’t that person. But I was so angry, because he had been behind everything so far – he was the reason Danny died in my arms, he was the reason I was almost killed in my cell, because he handled things for Fisk, and I couldn’t get to Fisk, and now he was threatening me with a gun, so – “ She stammered, but she found her words. “So I shot him. And then I threw the gun in the Hudson and never said anything about it to anyone. Until now.” She looked up, her vision blurred by tears. “Are you going to turn me in?”

There was a gap in the conversation; neither of them had expected this. “Like you said,” Matt replied after he recovered, “we’re your lawyers. We don’t have to. The question is whether you want to turn yourself in.”

She almost laughed. “What good would it do?”

“Well, I’d be a hyprocrite to say everyone should turn themselves in for their crimes,” Matt admitted. “Even serious ones. But guilt can destroy a person. And last night it almost killed you. So if you want to, you can do it.”

“We’ll stand up for you,” Foggy jumped in. “Even with a confession, it’s still probably only going to be manslaughter, and you have a solid claim of self-defense or temporary insanity. Some detectives will pat themselves on the back for solving a cold case, maybe Wesley’s family – if he has anybody – will feel some relief, maybe they won’t – but you’ll get a light sentence. They’ll take a plea for sure. And if we go to court, they might not even convict.” Foggy sighed. “But you would have to relive every aspect of it, and you can’t do that until you get clean. And the very fact that you got clean will help your image in the case.”

“This is all conjecture, of course,” Matt said firmly. “The important thing is that we help you get clean, and that’s not going to happen overnight. Then – if you feel like you need to – we can discuss legal options for offering a confession.”

“And if I don’t want to do that?”

“Then we won’t,” Matt said. “But the rehab is non-negotiable, if you want our help.”

She swallowed back more tears, and was silent. Foggy was open and giving, always supportive. Matt was firm but realistic.

And she wasn’t oblivious. He had done much more than her, and gone through much more to put it past him. But he wasn’t sitting in prison, either. “What did it feel like, when you killed someone?”

Foggy shifted nervously and was about to speak but Matt stopped him again. “I want to tell you that I don’t remember. It’s sort of true. I don’t remember most of them. We don’t even have a final count, and there was a SHIELD investigation. Off the books, of course.” His back was not so straight now. He leaned on the table, his hands fiddling nervously with whatever they could find. “The first time – I do remember that. You’re better off without the details. I thought I might never get over it. I wanted to die. But after that ...”

“It got easier?”

He didn’t flinch. “I stopped thinking of them as people. I was programmed to. So there would be no hesitation. Before I would go out they would give me a cocktail of uppers, and it felt so good to move around and break things. I didn’t have to think, which was good, because I really couldn’t. When you’re just following orders, and you don’t have to make decisions, anything can become routine. So that’s what it was. A routine. And the times between missions were so terrible that I really liked the routine.”

Foggy’s expression was pretty horrified, but he was not sitting in judgment of Matt. Maybe this was just something Matt had never described in detail for him before.

“It took me years to work out what happened to me,” Matt admitted. “Even if people told me, medically, much earlier. I had to process it. I had to learn to live with it. I had to have faith that G-d would forgive me, even if maybe the families of those people never will. And that took time, too. But no, I didn’t turn myself in or try to explain myself to any kind of international court. I didn’t feel that prison should be my penance for something I couldn’t control, and I didn’t trust the law to see that. So, as I said, I’m a hypocrite.” Without turning to his partner, he said, “Foggy, you want to say something.”

“You weren’t responsible for any of your actions,” Foggy said, with more conviction than Karen had heard from him yet. “Interpol wasn’t going to understand that. Karen – she was in an extreme situation. She was undergoing severe, repeated trauma and her life was in danger. It doesn’t undo it but it makes a strong legal case against accountability.” He turned back to Karen. “And I’m not just saying that because I’m your lawyer and friend. It’s the truth.”

She knew Foggy was telling the truth. Foggy always told the truth when it mattered. He was always genuine. Matt was, too, in his more brooding, secretive way.

“I can’t afford rehab.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Matt offered, clearly having given it some thought. “We know people. We can find funds.”

“And G-d forbid, you might have to pay off your debts by working for us again,” Foggy added. “Which would be a real shame.”

He smiled and she smiled, and she felt like the world might not be falling apart after all.

*************************

The first rehab program was in-patient at a facility upstate. The scenery was beautiful and quiet and there was even some stupid therapy with horses, as if learning how to clean a horse’s hoof and giving it commands would help her forget about drugs. Visitors were not allowed, but Matt and Foggy called or emailed every day. They drove up to pick her up at the end of the program, Matt looking a little green from carsickness. On the way home, Foggy regaled her with interesting Yiddish and Hebrew phrases he’d learned in his conversion class, and how crazy the wedding industrial complex was, and how fortunate that his future mother-in-law was handling it, really.

From there she went straight to an outpatient program in the city, filled with other people who were on or had started on prescription pain killers. Most of them were just there to complete a court-ordered program to see their kids again, not necessarily get clean. They didn’t offer housing, so she lived with Matt and Juan for a few days until he got someone in his apartment complex to sublet a room to her.

Over the next six months, she struggled to get up every day, to face everyone in front of her, and to not relapse (which she did, a couple times, but never enough to put her in the hospital). It was never easy, and the hard parts never seemed to let up, even for a second. After her second relapse with a bag of painkillers, Matt found her and took her to get her stomach pumped. It was the weekend and Foggy was out, so Juan went with them.

“It’s a good education for him,” Matt told her. “I’m not sure how comprehensive his Catholic high school is being about the realities of addiction. You’re doing me a parenting favor.”

That was the only thing he said about it, other than to be supportive. He never blamed her, or yelled at her, or even got frustrated in front of her. (She learned from the papers that he did, in costume, kick the shit out of the man who sold her drugs the next night, but it seemed rude to bring it up). All he really said, over and over, was “It gets better.”

“When?”

“Eventually.” He didn’t lie to her, and she appreciated that. “You’ll get there.”

He had more faith than she did, but for a time, it was enough.

*************************

Another six months passed, and she danced at Foggy’s wedding, with a very embarrassed Juan, while his father watched on in his own manner of doing that, and smiled. Maybe he wouldn’t know it, but she smiled back anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia time: Why why Foggy wear green from the second story on?


	7. Marci

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So no one got the trivia? It was a tough one. The answer: Foggy is mentioned as wearing green twice, but only after he gets earthbending. Benders naturally gravitate to their colors: air is orange/saffron, fire is red, water is blue, and earth is green. Matt and Stick are completely oblivious to this, obviously, and nothing has ever changed about their outfits.
> 
> This is probably the last section of this series. I do have some scrambled ideas, but I'm working on fresher, unrelated material now, and I have a lot of other writing projects coming up, so we'll see. As usual, comments, questions, and requests are always appreciated!

“Matt wants to adopt a Mexican immigrant,” Foggy said.

“What?”

“Um, that’s what he wants to do. And you did a focus on immigration law, right? Because this needs to happen fast. Or he’s going to get deported.”

Matt Murdock was not known for picking up strays. He was a bit of a stray himself – Marci seriously doubted he could manage without Foggy – and shunned social interaction unless it was overly serious business or manipulative flirting. So none of this made sense.

Neither did the story that followed, which involved a child trafficking ring, and Matt investigating it somehow, and some really awful stuff that Foggy wouldn’t go into (and Marci didn’t want him to go into), and now this kid (Foggy didn’t even know his last name) was in the hospital, and his family was dead, and he was going to get deported, And Matt’s first instinct was, ‘Well of course I’ll support this child because I am really capable of doing that.’ It would be almost funny if the rest of the story wasn’t so horrifying.

And she knew what happened to immigrants – though refugee was a better word in this case. So she said yes because she didn’t like seeing Foggy beg outside of the bedroom, mainly because he was so damn good at it. Yes, she would help visibly wounded, strung-out Matt, always a weirdo, try to get custody, or at least halt the deportation process until they found someone better.

That better person had to be Foggy, of course, because that was the way her life was turning out. Her boyfriend came to her and argued – very well, she might add – that _he_ should be the one to help Matt raise this random kid they’d found in a warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen. It made sense, really. They already were mere inches away from being the best gay couple she knew, and she had lived in SoHo for a while. That they weren’t actually fucking was, at this point, a little inconsequential. So she very sarcastically wished them well, but kept the crockpot Foggy had bought for the apartment, even though she never cooked. She needed to get _something_ out of this.

*************************

It was two months before she actually saw the kid, and holy shit, did that answer a lot of questions. She came over to their office to look over the immigration paperwork and the little tyke was running around the office like it was some kind of racetrack – that was, when he wasn’t completely glued to Matt. For literally the entire time they were actually in the conference room, Juan held tight onto Matt’s side like he was going to fall if he let go for even a second, and Matt, the guy who didn’t like to be touched in most situations, did nothing to discourage this. He ran his fingers through Juan’s hair and whispered to him in Spanish. He had a stupid grin on his face, the kind Marci hadn’t seen since what, law school graduation? Like he was really happy.

He _loved_ this kid. Usually foster parents were nervous and edgy at first, especially with a massively traumatized kid and a cultural barrier between them, but Matt was a natural, and Marci could see perfectly well why Foggy felt the need to make this happen, even if it sidelined any other relationships he might try to have in the next few years, until they divorced. If they got divorced. Maybe Matt wouldn’t want to divorce. He _was_ pretty Catholic.

She had to hedge her bets, and despite the sad, adorable face Foggy gave her, she put her profile back up on Tindr, because she was a busy woman and technology made everything easier.

*************************

Matt didn’t stop being a weirdo, of course, and he took Foggy down with him. Otherwise what would her ex-boyfriend be doing at her door at two in the morning, kid in hand? “Please – just take him for a day.”

“A day?”

“Maybe longer. It’s complicated. It’s really, really complicated.” He kissed Juan on the cheek and said something in Spanish. Marci had taken Latin and French because, duh. “Be good to Aunt Marci.”

“I’m a – “

“Please,” Foggy repeated, and damn if he didn’t sound desperate. “Just hold on to him. My parents are out of town and it’s an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

But he was staring at his phone, and avoided her question entirely. “And my phone might be out of range. Otherwise I’ll keep you posted. ThanksMarciIknewyoucoulddoit.”

He made his escape before she could raise an objection, and Marci figured it had to be pretty serious, as she remembered overhearing Matt saying that she seemed like the “type that eats her young.” Well, it was time to prove him wrong. She looked down at Juan, with his coat quite overtly over pajamas, and a Spider-man backpack, looking a bit frightened by the situation, and she knelt down to his level. “Hi. I’m Marci.”

“I’m Juan,” he said.

“I’m going to take care of you until your dads come back, okay?” _Your dads_. So. Weird.

He nodded, but he didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it.

“Do you want water before you go to bed? Or juice?”

“Dad says I’m not supposed to have corn syrup.”

She rolled her eyes. “I take it this particular dad is Matt?”

Again, he nodded.

“And no soda, either?”

His eyes went wide. “Soda is for Saturday only.”

“Well, we’re a couple days off, but what Matt doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she said. “How about a coke?” She had the itty bitty cans for nausea and guests. Probably wouldn’t hurt him. She poured him half of the already tiny serving and he watched her in disbelief. “Tell him I gave you milk or something, okay? And brush your teeth.”

She patted his head. He _was_ pretty cute.

*************************

Juan didn’t go to school yet, and lacking an update from Matt or Foggy and no babysitters on her call list, she took him to work. Not that they had a daycare or anything, but she had her own office, so who had to know? He did have a change of clothes, and it wasn’t like he was a baby. But he did lack activities.

“Here,” she said, offering him the coloring book and activity set she’d meant for her niece Sarah. It came with three lousy crayons and a dreidel, and it was probably below his age group, but coloring was coloring, and she could send an intern out for more at lunch.

He inspected the cover before opening the packaging. “What’s Ha-nu-ka?”

“It’s the terrible little festival people who don’t have Christmas trees get to celebrate. And it’s magical, because you never know when it’s coming until you remember to google it in November.” She did have a Jewish calendar _somewhere_ , in the pile of things she got handed but couldn’t immediately trash before offending the person. “And if you enjoy the book I can tell you the story of how a lamp lasted a long time and we make a big deal out of it.”

It was time to go to work, and that was a problem. People who wanted to make partner were not supposed to take sick days. Or have kids.

“Take him to Barnes and Noble and just let him buy whatever,” she told her intern after making her meet them in the Starbucks across the street. She handed Marissa her credit card. “Try to keep it under a hundred. And be _very_ nice to him.”

She did not ask Marissa if she spoke Spanish. If she didn’t, she had better learn it on the way to the store or her ass was grass.

That trip managed to last two hours before Marissa showed up in her office with Juan at her side, holding a Hobbit-themed activity set, six books, and a 2000-piece puzzle set that was definitely beyond his abilities. “I brought him in through the utility elevator,” Marissa nervously explained. “He says he’s supposed to stay with you.”

She supposed that was fair. She looked at Juan. How old was he? Eight? Did eight-year-olds take naps? “Do you know how to use an iPad?”

He nodded vigorously.

She pulled out her spare, the one with the trash romance novels on it and no proprietary documents, and handed it to him. “I bet you can’t beat my Candy Crush score.”

He grunted at her, his eyes fierce with competition, and maybe he was Matt’s kid after all. Marissa herded him into the break room that no one respectful would be seen in, where he was glued to the TV, watching the Avengers and the sub-Avengers (or whatever the extra group was called) fight a giant robot in Cape Cod. Usually this didn’t give people around the office much pause, but Marissa had a massive crush on Daredevil and Power Man, so she kept it on.

Marci’s luck couldn’t hold out that long, of course. She’d almost made it, too – Foggy called during her lunch hour to say he and Matt were outside and she told security to buzz them in, but while they were still on their way up, Juan chose that moment to start running up and down the hallways, and Rosalind Sharpe also chose that moment to _use_ one of those hallways.

“Who is this?” she said, more as an accusation than an actual question, but slightly toned down because hey, there was a kid in the room.

 _Never show fear. Never show weakness_. It was Marci’s mantra at Sharpe and Associates. She had to be a lion, not a gazelle. Or just a gazelle that never left the smell of blood behind. “This is Juan. There was an emergency and I had to take him for a few hours. His dad is on the way.” She grabbed Juan with enough grace to not hurt him but still look like she was in control. “Juan, say hello to Ms. Sharpe.” To this day, Marci wasn’t sure if her employer was single, married, or whatever.

Juan hid behind her and waved silently to Sharpe. He was lucky he was so damn cute.

Both of them were silenced by the bell of the elevator, and a very disheveled version of Matt and Foggy stepped out of the elevator. “Dad!” Juan broke free of Marci’s grip, nearly crashed into Sharpe, and barreled straight into Matt’s chest. Matt noticeably flinched. “Uncle Foggy!”

“Please don’t crush your dad,” Foggy said, putting a hand on Juan’s shoulder. “So – “ Which was when he noticed they weren’t alone in the hallway.

“Matt, Foggy, this is Rosalind Sharpe,” Marci said with a very hootie-tootie wave, the best one she could muster. “Ms. Sharpe, these are the upstanding attorneys of Nelson and Murdock.”

Foggy was a little cowed but Matt, of course, had no hesitation. With Juan clinging to him, he stepped forward and offered his hand straight out in front of himself. “Ms. Sharpe.” He was a slightly more subdued version of his charming self – he looked exhausted – but he still had a look that could slay co-eds at a distance. “And this is my law partner – “

“Franklin Nelson,” Ms. Sharpe said. “Yes, I know. Your firm’s AV rating hasn’t exactly gone unnoticed.”

“Um, thank you.” Unlike Matt, Foggy was definitely too nervous to want to come into close contact with her. Maybe sight had something to do with it. “Well, we won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Who adopted this child, exactly?” Sharpe asked. Not completely derisively, either. She just sounded ... well, kind of interested.

“I did,” Matt said.

“That must have been ... legally challenging.”

“We had some good lawyers on our side,” Matt said, thankfully not mentioning Marci. That she wasn’t proud of what she’d done, but hey, not the time or place. “If you would excuse us.”

They headed back to the elevator and Foggy mouthed ‘Call me’ to Marci just as the door closed.

“Sorry about that,” Marci said, though she wasn’t sure why she said it. “I – “

“No need,” Sharpe said, and returned to her office. Weird.

*************************

She didn’t accept Foggy’s offers for a while. She slammed through some awful guys who took her to awful places for dinner, and one guy who seriously thought it was okay to meet for coffee first, and outright said he needed to know if she was eligible to marry a Cohen before they proceeded (Her response: “Fuck you.”). She needed nice men coming and going in her life, but it would be nice to have one who wouldn’t demand that she prove herself in some roundabout fashion before he even offered to pick up the check.

She talked with Foggy first, over drinks she billed to her expense account, because he was a good talker. He really, really liked being a dad, sort of, but not in an obnoxious “here look at my wallet-sized fold-out collage of what he did last week.” People mostly did that over babies, who themselves didn’t do much in photographs, and Juan had just turned nine. Marci wasn’t entirely surprised that Foggy was a more maternal type then Matt (or so she guessed – she hadn’t spoken to him), to be stereotypical about gender roles in a nuclear family. But Matt seemed to be carrying his weight, if she had any sense of it. They probably went to some father-son events for handicapped former orphans.

Eventually Foggy talked his way into her bed because hey, he was amazing and she wasn’t thrilled with her newfound celibacy. Any number of jokes about adultery – and she had stocked up on plenty – couldn’t scare him off.

“You realize this makes you ‘the other woman.’”

“That would have been the least romantic thing you’ve ever said if there was a woman involved in the first place.”

Foggy did kind of seem like he wanted a relationship of some sort, but she was having none of it. Not that he wasn’t a nice guy to have around – sometimes he was even a fantastic guy to have around, if he went down on her and took out her recycling on the same night. But she didn’t budge on her policy about married dudes, however unconsummated their true love was, and he understood that with only an occasional reminding.

And that was good enough for her.

*************************

Foggy appeared in her doorway one night with a divorce decree in one hand, white roses (red clashed with her carpet) in the other.

“Are you still living with him?”

He slumped in his suit. “Come on. It’s hard to find a place in a _day_.”

She could point out that this was New York and you could do anything with cash for a security deposit on hand, but she was nice and kissed him instead.

It took her three months to consider that they were officially living together, because in that time, most of his stuff had migrated her to her place, and at that point, him finding his own apartment really made no sense. When he wasn’t with her he was at Matt’s because, duh, they still had a kid together. Maybe they hadn’t gone to a lab and had them cook up a test tube baby using both of their DNA (that had to be possible if billionaires were making flying suits left and right), but it was definitely their kid. She didn’t even know why Matt was so unquestioningly considered the father, but again, she didn’t spend her very limited spare time around him. He was partner in a law practice, and she was trying to become one. She barely had time for Foggy and that was the guy she was _dating_.

It took much longer to consider marriage. Her path was still clear – straight on ‘til partner – and she had to be very, very careful with any move she made in personal life that might prevent that. Not that upcoming lawyers couldn’t be married, certainly, but female lawyers were better off alone, or in a lesbian relationship, or making some kind of casual guarantee that kids would come after partner status. One of the reasons she had worked so hard to join Sharpe and Associates was because she knew that even though Sharpe was childless, she was statistically less likely to mommy-track her staff than a male-run firm. Marci couldn’t afford to take chances with her entire career, and Foggy had a healthy respect for that, which was why he was definitely, two years after moving in, holding off asking her.

She made a list. Things were better in list form. They were better on a computer screen, when emotions just became statements of fact.

Pros to Marrying Foggy:

  * Great in bed
  * Fantastic in bed
  * Takes out trash, knows how to fix plumbing better than the super
  * Is about as emotionally giving as a career lawyer could ever be
  * And then some
  * Would make a great dad
  * Would probably stay home to raise the kids if asked
  * Owns own business, makes own schedule
  * Went to the IVY leagues and is not an asshole about it
  * Decent genes probably
  * From a marrying perspective, is definitely a “catch”
  * STILL constantly trying to impress me



Cons to Marrying Foggy:

  * Owns business that is almost always running into the ground
  * Doesn’t know as much about home repair as he thinks he does
  * Kid from another marriage (but kid is cool)
  * Still in love with ex-husband
  * Ex-husband is crazy possessive, possibly just crazy altogether
  * Still loves his ex
  * Let’s face it I’m basically marrying Matt too
  * And he might murder me
  * Not Jewish; parents will cut me off



Marci didn’t think that her parents would cut her off entirely, but she’d rather not speculate on that. But compared to the issues with Matt, a person she did not trust and barely got along with, religion was a minor stumbling block.

*************************

Foggy, being the sensitive guy he was, knew to talk in a language steeped in hypotheticals when it came to this subject. He pried her first with questions about being on the lease, letting her take up the direction from there.

“If we were talking hypothetically – “

“ _Very_ hypothetically,” she said over her stir fry.

“Very, very hypothetically. Super hypothetically –,”

“Foggy-bear, I get it.”

He smiled with relief. “What are the issues we would need to, um, discuss? About our hypothetical future?”

“Okay.” She was ready for this. Or, she thought she could manage it, even if she wasn’t. “Juan. Tell me about custody.”

“Matt has primary custody. I waived visitation rights, but I have to be consulted on his education and major medical decisions. And uh, I agreed to pay half of his school tuition through college, plus some living expenses, but only as I was able.”

“If we joined our finances – “

“We could write up something new, specifying that it has to be from _my_ income. It wouldn’t be airtight, legally speaking, but Matt would honor it. He’s not going to take money from us if we don’t have any to give. He’s too principled for that.”

She knew how shaky divorce settlements could be, and she knew that Matt had put up a tiny fuss over theirs, but that was mostly over him not wanting to get divorced at all. The details, Foggy told her, didn’t concern him. She knew Foggy believed Matt, and that was probably enough. In the back of her head, she wondered if he could stand up to any kind of character assassination in return for trying to garnish their joint wages. He had a sketchy past and she was willing to bet her summer pocketbook (not the winter one, never that) that he had a sketchy present.

“So let’s say that all goes according to plan,” she said, “you gave him primary custody, but I assume you’re going to want to see your son.”

“He’s Matt’s son – “

“Not according to the law.”

“ – but, um, yes. He’s part of my life. He would be part of your life. I mean, somewhat. We would make it work.” He put his hand on the table, closer to hers. “You would come first. If you wanted – I mean, this is entirely your decision, it’s your body – if you wanted a kid, Juan wouldn’t be the first person in the world with step-siblings. Hell, who knows? Matt might settle down, make some little future Catholic boxers.”

Marci snorted. "And there's one other thing. One really, really minor thing." Marci swallowed. "I need you to convert to Judaism."

"WHAT?"

His reaction was understandable but still annoying because hey, she wasn't done explaining yet. "Look, it doesn't have to matter. I'm not going to hold you to it or anything. But if my parents are going to pay for the wedding, we need to have a rabbi say you're Jewish. Then you can go back to Christmas at the Nelsons and eggnog and all the stuff I know you don't really believe in."

"I don't know who's the bigger hypocrite here," he replied. "Do you even own a menorah?"

"Yeah, somewhere!" She would not go toe-to-toe with him on this. "And I skipped lunch on Yom Kippur."

"We went out for drinks on Yom Kippur."

"We went for drinks _after_ Yom Kippur. Jewish holidays end at sunset, duh. That's why I was such a cheap drunk that night."

"My parents could pay for the wedding."

"I also want my parents to _go_ to the wedding."

"Marci, seriously," Foggy said. "This is the first time I have ever heard of you caring about what your parents think. So I have to conclude that you were replaced by a pod person in your sleep last night and I am not talking to my girlfriend. I am talking to a religious pod person."

Well, he had her there. They certainly didn't need an argument about who was more agnostic. "Judaism is not just about being religious."

"It's a religion!"

"Yeah, well, and other stuff. Culture. Heritage. Other dumb things I learned in USY and Hebrew High School. I'm sure I can find you a pamphlet."

"You just said it's dumb!" He shook his head, and she didn't answer him immediately. "This is really important to you, isn't it?”

“No!”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s basically a yes. Or you wouldn’t be asking me to do it.” Foggy softened his expression. “It’s okay, you know. To care about something you can’t define. It makes you human.” He patted the bed next to him for her to sit. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll consider converting – consider it – on two conditions.”

“Shoot.”

“First, if we do get married, I want Thor to marry us.”

She shrugged. “If you think you can get him. And we can’t tell any of my relatives who he is.”

“Oh, I’m going to get him,” Foggy said with way too much confidence. “Second, you have to tell me why this is so important to you. Because it is a big deal. Going through the process of _converting to another religion_ is a big deal and I’m not going to half-ass it.”

Marci sat down and he took her hand because damnit, he was a warm and affectionate and empathetic person and that was probably why she was even willing to consider marrying him in a billion years. “I don’t know. Maybe all of that stupid children’s programming worked. Religion is supposed to unite couples, not separate them, and I don’t want to default to whatever you are. Our kids –

Foggy made what was definitely an excited squeak.

“ – If _we_ were to have kids, we want them to have the same values and be on the same page. Matt takes your kid to church every week, and you’re not part of that.”

“Because I’m technically Episcopalian.”

“I’m saying, honesty now, if we wanted to unite our lives, this would be something that we should share. We both have enough obligations to other people and it’s – don’t even look at me like that – it’s going to come between us. This would be something that’s _ours_.”

Foggy swallowed. He didn’t look terrified so much as mystified, but he was completely serious when he said, “What do I have to do?”

*************************

Fortunately, it was not hard to find a rabbi in Manhattan who would agree to do a conversion for marriage, something her old suburban rabbi would sneer at. G-d, she would probably have to face him at the wedding. It wasn’t that he was threatening, it was just uncomfortable to keep a straight face across from someone who had pinched your cheeks when you were in your fat stage _and_ in braces and you were still somehow supposed to take seriously.

The meeting almost went smoothly. The rabbi was clean shaven, had a nice office overloaded with books but a professional looking desk, and didn’t make her feel like she was here to practice for her bat mitzvah. He gave a course for converts, and he could explain the basics of what Foggy would need to know and do.

“So you’re sitting down?” he said at Foggy, even though he had to know he was. “I like men to be sitting down for this part.”

“Um, okay,” Foggy said.

“Before you ritually immerse yourself in the mikvah, you need to have a formal brit milah. That’s a circumcision. It marks the covenant between G-d and the Jewish – “

“I am circumcised.” Foggy didn’t want to say it but he did rush to get the information out there.

“Yes, but when you do it in a hospital – there’s a problem that brit milah requires _hatafat dam brit_ – the drawing of blood. So the mohel makes a little snip, just big enough so that – “

At which point Foggy passed out cold. In a chair. It didn’t have armrests and he slumped right over and took the chair with him as he fell onto the floor.

“That’s why I have a carpet,” said the rabbi, smiling unhelpfully. “Nu, this is a good guy?”

“Yeah, or he was a second ago.”

“They use a local anesthetic. He’ll feel nothing.”

“Please just stop talking,” she said. “And do you have any smelling salts?”

*************************

They took a break. Or, they took a break from discussing their future, but Foggy didn’t flee to the hills, so she gave him points for that. And he hadn’t proposed to her, because no way was he pulling that shit until she said it was okay to pull that particular bit of shit. And she didn’t mention that she was terrified – no, bad word – _something_ of wearing a ring in the office, and giving the impression that she might be anything other than an asexual, agender lawyer with a heart of stone who sustained herself on the blood of her enemies. She was going to get her name on the door if she had to stomp half of New York beneath her feet. Right. That was the plan.

But her heart of stone fluttered a little bit when Foggy offered to take her out to lunch instead of dinner, which meant he wanted to be sober, and he’d been doing a lot of drinking lately. And he was smiling when he said it, and she congratulated herself on keeping it together until they made it to the restaurant.

“First of all, I’m adopted,” he said.

“I know.”

She felt a little bit bad for taking the wind out of his sails. He was trying so hard. He gaped. “You do?”

“Your mother has red hair, your father has black hair, all of your sisters are redheads, and you’re blond. I can do the genetic bath, Foggy-bear.” And she really did say the last part gently. “I didn’t say anything in case _you_ didn’t know.”

“Oh.” He had to work that out in his head for a moment. “Well, thank you, I guess? That would have been hard to take. Matt’s never figured it out, though I guess now the reason’s obvious. Anyway, so neither of my parents are my parents. I don’t remember how old I was when they told me. I just knew that dad had kidney problems and even though it wasn’t serious, I offered to donate a kidney because I’d seen that on television, and they felt like that was a good opening for that conversation. I’ve never brought it up because it was never really relevant. They’ve been my parents all my life, and it was a closed adoption, so I couldn’t unseal the records until I was eighteen. By then I didn’t want to put myself through that.” He shrugged. “I haven’t thought about it in years, but when I told my mom about our, um, situation last night on the phone, she asked me if it mattered that my birth mother is Jewish. And I googled it and it _totally_ does. In fact, that’s the only person who matters. Judaism is matrilineal. So I’m already a Jew!” He gave her a very proud thumbs up. “In on a technicality! Very lawyer-ly. Now we just have to prove it.”

*************************

The funny thing was, it _did_ involve a court. The rabbi said, “You need to take this to a _beis din_.”

Foggy made that tiny gesture to her that was code for, ‘Please explain what he’s saying.’

The rabbi got to it before she did. “A _beis din_ is a court of three learned men who make rulings on individual situations in Jewish law. Technically it doesn’t have to be three rabbis but for important matters it usually is. If you have any paperwork from a proper bris that might have been signed, that would work. And your mother should testify.”

“I don’t know who she is,” Foggy said. “It was a closed adoption. No contact on either side.”

“But you said your mother knows her.”

“She knew her – actually no, she said she knows her. So she must know at least that she’s still alive, right?” Foggy looked to Marci for answers, as if she had any. “I don’t want to sound like I don’t care about my birth mother. I just don’t know her. I don’t know anything about her except that she’s Jewish, and around the time my parents were getting married, she was friends with my mom. And that apparently she didn’t want me.”

Marci wasn’t sure what in her made her take Foggy’s hand, but he did seem to appreciate it.

“The beis din won’t go on the word of your mother – the adoptive mother. You need documentation or testimony. Preferably both. The more you can provide, the easier it will be.”

“But I am a Jew, right? They can’t decide that I’m not a Jew?”

“Ehhhh.” He scratched his neck. “The issue is not whether you are or you aren’t. The issue is whether we need to do a brit milah or not, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s super important,” Foggy said. “So I’ll talk to my parents, and if they don’t cough up a name, I’ll unseal the records. But she might not want to talk to me.”

“Do the best that you can,” the rabbi said, trying to be supportive.

Foggy did deserve a lot of support. She recognized that. This had gone beyond dunking in an underground pool of well water and getting married under a chupah. As casual as Foggy was trying to be about being adopted, he led with his face, which always betrayed when he was being dragged through something he did not deserve to be dragged through.

“Just so I know,” he said that night, when she was resting her head on his chest, which was always warm, “if I did theoretically propose to you, it would probably ... I don’t know, end well for me?”

“If you want to put it off until after – “

“No, now I’m too curious.” But he wanted to say _too worried_. “She never tried to contact me. She might not know anything about me now.”

“That’s what closed adoptions are for,” she said. “To make the process easier and the lines clearer. And it was obviously for the best. You have awesome parents.”

“I do?”

“They haven’t kicked me out on my ass, so yes, pretty awesome,” she replied. “If anyone does it, it’ll be Matt.”

He didn’t bristle that much over that. “He deserves some credit for being cool about the whole ‘converting for marriage’ thing.”

“Really? Not that I care what Matt thinks.” Which was an outright lie that neither of them needed to acknowledge.

“Yeah, he’s very ‘live and let live’ when it comes to religion, as long as you don’t get between him and his Jesus crackers. And he gets very annoyed if you call them that.” He turned his head to her. “I don’t have to formally renounce Jesus or anything, do I?”

“You don’t believe in him.”

“But it would still be weird.”

“No. I don’t think you have to. Also he was Jewish, so, whatever.”

*************************

Being the decent, marriageable guy he was, Foggy did put a ring on it that he definitely could not afford, and she had to wonder if one of Nelson and Murdock’s clients was a jeweler or something, because it was amazing. It was silver with diamonds and it was utterly perfect and went with everything she owned and she was fairly sure she could punch someone with it, particularly anyone around the office who mentioned it with the wrong tone.

She told her parents, and lied and said he was taking conversion courses, because she didn’t give a shit what they thought about it but she didn’t want to follow-up questions just yet, and her mom lit up the phones and for two days it was nothing but answering the same questions over and over again. Yes, he was a “doctor or a lawyer”. (Plus) Yes, he had an adopted child without her. (Negative) Some of the questions were bizarre – “Does he have good eyesight?” “Does he know how to make a good chulent? Because one of you has to.” But no one asked her if she was pregnant, and that was nice, though it really would have been beneath them. Matt even sent her a voicemail congratulating her and Juan chimed in, and it sounded legit.

Because he couldn’t put it off anymore, Foggy went to talk to his parents – in person – about his birth mother. “They said they’ll call her,” he said over the phone. “Explain the situation.”

“So they have contact?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He didn’t sound like he wanted to talk about it, or even think much about it, so they changed topics, and she let it go for as long as the Nelsons wanted to drag their heels.

As it turns out, they were not the problem. Or the solution. Whatever.

*************************

Marci was called into Rosalind Sharpe’s office – alone – and she knew something was wrong. That didn’t happen to people, unless they were being let go, or something somehow worse, because Sharpe could definitely manage it. She wasn’t evil or anything, but in the legal profession, it was hard to tell. She’d developed a hard shell as a female prosecutor for the DA back when that was a problem. At some point, she had been all Marci wanted to be, and Marci wondered if she saw herself in her new hire at first.

Now she just didn’t want to speculate.

“Sit down, Miss Stahl,” Sharpe said with all of her usual composure. She didn’t seem like she was gearing up for a firing but she probably didn’t need to gear up. “Congratulations on your engagement.”

 _Never show fear_. It was like being in front of a bear, right? Keep your head down and don’t show fear. Or were you supposed to look bears in the eyes? No, that was dogs. “Thank you, Ms. Sharpe.”

Sharpe gave one of her bright little smiles, reserved for special occasions, so either she was actually happy for her or she was about to tear her insides out with her teeth and clean the floor with Marci’s own jacket. Hard to tell. Instead she leaned forward and clasped her hands together on her desk. “As I’ve come to understand, you’re engaged to Franklin Nelson.”

“Yes.” Even though no one called him Franklin. She wasn’t even sure if it said Franklin instead of Foggy on their firm’s shitty website. “He’s a good lawyer.”

“Yes, I know. I read his dissertation,” Sharpe said. Which, weird. Marci had landed Foggy a job offer way back when Matt was missing, but that was before he defended his thesis, so ... what? “I’m not going to beat around the bush. The reason I’m mentioning this is because I’m his birth mother.”

Marci deserved one thousand lawyer points for not flinching that hard. “Um, I’m sorry?”

“Anna called me today,” she said, and it took Marci a second to connect that to Anna Nelson, Foggy’s mom. “Technically I suppose I should tell Franklin first, but there’s no precedent for this situation, and I could use an ally when I meet him tomorrow.”

Marci tried not to stare and failed.

“I wanted to name him Francis, after my grandfather,” she said. “Anna hated it, so we settled on Franklin. I know he goes by a nickname.”

“You’re his mother.” Because Marci couldn’t even.

“Since it’s come up as a matter of record, yes, I am.” It was the first time Rosalind Sharpe didn’t look totally cold-hearted, but there were layers to her lawyerly mask and they didn’t all come off at once. “You understand that it was a closed adoption? We felt that would be better for him. And considering how the Nelsons have raised him, I think we made the right decision.” She added, “Please understand that nepotism has no place in this firm.”

“But you did offer him a job.”

“Because of his talent and his background, and nothing else,” Sharpe told her, and Marci was positive she was telling the truth. “As we agreed, he’s a good lawyer.”

Foggy had told the butcher story a thousand times. His parents had been adamant about him not becoming a lawyer. Now Marci knew why. “And they told you to tell me?”

“They didn’t give me any other instructions beyond providing documentation of his bris and naming for the beis din,” she replied. “And not to hurt his feelings. That’s why I thought it might be better if you were also at the meeting.” She added, “It’s a suggestion, not a request. And I’m not suggesting it as your employer.”

“I understand,” Marci said, but she was half-distracted trying to find Foggy’s face in Rosalind Sharpe’s tight features. Her cheeks were a little rounded even though she was very thin, and her hair was blond with grey streaks, but it was a bottle blonde, not unusual for her age. But then again if she dyed it blond, it had probably been blonde before. And she didn’t smile like Foggy did, but that was because Marci had never seen her with the full-mouthed Foggy Nelson grin.

“Considering the nature of the situation, if you want to ask some questions that will remain strictly off the record, you can do so now. But nothing you intend to keep from Franklin. Sorry, Foggy.” She shook her head at the nickname. Obviously she was not a fan.

It wasn’t a challenge, but Marci knew she couldn’t sit there, empty-mouthed. “Are you married?”

“I’ve never been,” Sharpe said.

“Foggy’s your only child?”

Sharpe nodded. “You can see why I might have kept some tabs on him. Through a completely circumspect manner, of course.”

“Who’s his father?”

“His father is not relevant,” she said, somewhat sternly, then eased up immediately. “It doesn’t matter in Jewish law.”

“But you know who it is.”

Sharpe sighed. “We haven’t spoken since I told him I was pregnant.”

That was the end of that line of questioning. “You really read Foggy’s thesis?”

Sharpe gestured to the copies of the _Columbia Law Review_ in her bookshelf. “I already read his articles. I may not deserve it, but I allowed myself some maternal pride. I was surprised he wasn’t summa cum laude, but as I understand it, it was a particularly competitive graduating class.”

Marci bristled with her own pride. She’d come in second in her class, after Matt. They’d both grabbed that top honor. “Do you know about his previous marriage?”

Sharpe nodded. “It took me some time to puzzle that one out. And he was technically defrauding the state, but I felt like reporting him wouldn’t endear him to me. It’s much more important that _you_ know about it.”

“I did sort of help him put it together,” she said. She was ready to defend her fiancé to her future mother-in-law. “It was for a good cause.”

“His law partner is similarly an excellent defense attorney,” Sharpe said. “Of course, overcoming tremendous hardships does a lot to earn the jury’s sympathy. Not that he shouldn’t use any and all weapons at his disposal for his client.”

 _Oh, you have no idea_ , Marci thought. “Matt is a good lawyer. And a good dad, I think.” And now she was defending Matt. As if this day could get any stranger. “But if you really want to know more about him, you have to ask Foggy.”

“Yes, that is the rub,” Sharpe said. “I’m going to ask something of you, but it’s understandable if you don’t want to do it.”

“You want me to tell Foggy about you.”

She looked relieved. “I thought it might be better than going in cold. But I know it shouldn’t be your responsibility. He just might handle it better if it came from you, if he truly loves you,” her boss said. “And if he doesn’t, you should kick him to the curb and sell the ring to a pawn shop.”

Okay, maybe Rosalind Sharpe wasn’t the most maternal type, but damn if she wasn’t loyal. “I’ll do it.”

*************************

Foggy took the news as he took everything – dramatically. “ _What?_ ”

“Rosalind. Sharpe. Is. Your. Mom.” She rolled her eyes and took another sip of her appletini. “C’mon, Foggy. You speak like seven languages and English is your first one. It should be easy to get.” But when Foggy was too flustered to respond, she took it down a couple notches. “Look, she just dumped this info on me at the office today. I don’t know how to handle it, either. My boss is _your mom_.”

Foggy finally sputtered out, “She knew?”

“About what?”

“That you and I were ...” He needed to sit down. “She made me that job offer when Matt was ...”

“She says that was 100% legit. Maybe the reason she was following your career wasn’t like, a casual interest, but she wanted to hire you because you were a good lawyer and Nelson and Murdock was basically just a nameplate.”

“She said that?”

“No, she was much more respectable about it.”

“It was a closed adoption. No contact.”

“And your mom knew her number, so ...” She shrugged. “It’s something we can sort out.” She was looking forward to making Anna Nelson sweat bullets just a little bit. “She told me first so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise.”

“It is a huge surprise.”

“Yeah, it was for me too,” she said, and tried to make eye contact. Damn, she _could_ see a little bit of Rosalind in him. Maybe just around the nose. “But she thought it would go better if you didn’t just walk into the meeting cold and I agreed. She’s not showing it, but I think she might be a little scared of ... I don’t know, disappointing you.”

“She gave me up the moment I was born.”

“Don’t ask me to defend her. I don’t understand why she did it. I just know that you got to be raised by the Nelsons, and you’re Jewish. So, best of both worlds.” She needed to move his train of thought forward. “She said she wanted to name you Francis, but your mom said no, so that’s how they got Franklin.”

“Oh my G-d. That’s worse than Franklin,” Foggy replied. “Francis is a girl’s name.”

“I think it’s Frances with the e that’s the girl’s name, and Francis with the i that’s the boy’s name,” Marci said. “Either way, yeah, it would have sucked. But you probably just would have been Frank.”

“Is Francis a Hebrew name?”

“No. It’s not like, in the bible, so probably not. It is a very Jewish name, though. It’s also the name of a great soda company. I think they’re based out of Philadelphia,” she said. “Anyway, we did not chat about anything and everything. It wasn’t a girl’s day out. It was a super awkward conversation in her super-expensive-looking office. And also probably the longest conversation I’ve ever had with her.”

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t like to see him suffer. Seeing Foggy Nelson suffer was like seeing a kicked puppy get the flu. Matt Murdock was someone she felt she could go a couple rounds with, but Foggy Nelson couldn’t be more opposite. “You don’t have to be sorry about some shitty decisions your shitty mom made,” she said, and kissed him on the forehead. “She’s my boss? Whatever. I’ll handle it. I’ve got dirt on her now.”

“You’re up for this?”

“Yeah, of course.” She was wearing a ring, after all. “I’ve handled working for her for years. I can handle lunch and a council of elders. Which, by the way, is not going to be as cool as it sounds. Just so you know.”

It got a smile out of Foggy, which was good enough for her.

*************************

Lunch with Rosalind Sharpe was about as uncomfortable as Marci thought it would be, and she’d factored in keeping it to one drink. On the way downtown, Foggy vacillated between puddle of nervous mush and righteous avenger of his own birthright. He certainly had the right to be both. He could be terrifying when he was on the warpath, but that all came to a stuttering halt, full of gaps and spurts, when he saw Rosalind rise from her seat at their reserved table. She’d picked one of those restaurants where you had to have the host’s private cell phone and call two months ahead to get a reservation, of course. If this wasn’t an emotional shitshow already, Marci probably would have gone for the wine pairing.

“Hi, um, Rosalind,” Fogg said, tripping over her name because he clearly had debated what the hell to call her, and this was what actually happened in the moment.

“Foggy,” Rosalind – Marci supposed it was safe to think of her as that now – said back. “It’s nice to see you again.”

Tepid was a good word for the nature of the air around their corner table.

“W- When did you last see me?” It was halfway between just being curious and an accusation.

“Five years ago, when you came to the office to pick up your son,” she said. And that was the way she spoke of Juan – casually, without any qualifiers. Just a statement of a fact.

“Oh. Right.” He smiled, just a little bit. “Yeah, I guess ... that was the last time I saw you, too.” He released his very tight grip on Marci’s hand. “Well, you know Marci – really well.” He talked a lot when he was nervous, and this was no exception. It was probably a Nelson thing, not a Sharpe thing. “Thank you for um, coming forward. About the Jewish thing. It’s important to us.” And he said _us_ , just like that, without any qualifiers.

“In the old days, rabbis didn’t accept converts for marriage,” Rosalind said. “Now they’re more open-minded.”

“I wasn’t really that religious, anyway,” Foggy qualified. “I still, um, take this very seriously.”

“My family isn’t religious,” Marci said. “Just traditional. I do have one cousin who went to Israel for a year and became super duper black hat. He probably won’t show. And if he does, the food won’t be kosher enough for him.”

“There’s always one,” Rosalind said, and they were seated. They stared at their menus, which weren’t as overly complicated as their expressions implied, because it burned some time.

After ordering, Rosalind handled Foggy a document folder. The certificate inside was ornamental (as if someone would want this up on their wall), and mostly in Hebrew, but the English was clear enough. Foggy was definitely Jewish.

“Your Hebrew name is Mendel,” she said. “My Hebrew name is Chana, and your biological father wasn’t involved, so your Hebrew name is Mendel ben Avraham. That’s going to come up on the ketubah. And at life cycle events.”

“Um, okay.” Foggy’s hands were shaking. Here was the physical proof that he was not a Nelson. He wasn’t Irish and he wasn’t Episcopalian. He was a Jew with a Jewish Hebrew name. “Who is my father?”

“His name was Mark,” she said. “He wasn’t interested in having a pregnant girlfriend. I told him and that was the last time we spoke. I don’t know where he is now. If you want to look him up – “

Foggy waved it off very quickly. “It’s fine. I was just curious.”

“I suppose I should tell you that I wasn’t sure what to do, when I found out myself,” she said, and glanced warily at Marci. “Or should I tell you more privately?”

“Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of Marci.” He lowered one of his hands beneath the table and Marci took it.

Rosalind sighed. “Anna and I were best friends. We were pledges at the same sorority. She was engaged to Edward, and she was pregnant. But she miscarried very early on, before anyone knew about it except me and him, and there was some concern that she might not be able to get pregnant again. I figured I was young and healthy and another seven months wasn’t a very long time, so I agreed to carry you and she agreed to raise you.” She looked down at her untouched drink. “Obviously it wasn’t all that smooth. Even though we did the paperwork before you were born, I insisted on the bris. Hormones made us both a little crazy. Edward was there to keep the peace. After the bris she took you and that was that.”

“But you kept in touch with her.” Foggy’s voice was raw. He always wore his heart on his sleeve; that wasn’t about to change now.

“Legally speaking, we had no contact. And – I wanted a clean break. It would be more manageable for everybody. But I did tell her to call me, if you needed something down the road. They were more economically stable at the time while I was taking out loans for law school, so the next time I heard from her was when you were twelve and needed braces. So I paid for them. And you had a scholarship for college and between that and financial aid, you still weren’t completely covered, so I paid for that, too.” She straightened up. “I’m not saying this because I think you owe me any loyalty. It was between your mother and me. She said she needed help, so I gave it. We didn’t discuss it any further.”

“You followed my career.”

“From an appropriate distance,” she said, pride giving her a bit of backbone on that one. “I knew you graduated from law school, and I heard about the Landman and Zack internship through the Columbia law graduate grapevine. And it’s not hard to put a google alert for a name on your phone.”

He was definitely at the point of having tears, but wasn’t about to break down, not when he had ground to hoe. “So you knew about Matt’s disappearance.”

“I knew what the newspapers knew, and I don’t expect you to tell me about it. But yes, I offered you a job because I knew you might need a push to get out of an empty office.”

“What would you have said about who you were if I had accepted?”

“I don’t really know.” And that sounded like an honest answer. “I just knew that I had to work hard to get where I am, and if anybody had offered me help, I would have taken it. I didn’t know if your partner would ever be back.”

“I had faith,” he said. He didn’t thank her for the offer, but he didn’t drill into her about it, either. She was naked and exposed, metaphorically, but he didn’t go after her. It wasn’t in him; he wasn’t that type of person. “So, after this, what do we do? I mean, do you want to be invited to stuff?”

“Anna and I always did what we thought was best for you,” Rosalind replied. “Now that you’re an adult, you set the terms of our relationship. If you don’t want any, I’ll understand.”

“Okay,” Foggy said even though he was far from it.

Somehow, they got through lunch. Foggy had his cache of funny-but-tellable stories about either his law practice or Juan that he used to fill gaps in conversations all the time. Rosalind asked for follow-ups. Marci had to correct Foggy’s memory a couple times. For three people who had no idea how to talk to each other, they did okay.

They went uptown for the beit din, all the way to Yeshiva University in Washington Heights, with a lot of black hats and beards.

“You want this to be airtight,” Rosalind said. Well, she was a lawyer. “If you get a ruling from a Reform rabbi, a Conservative rabbi’s going to question it. If you get a ruling from a Conservative rabbi, an Orthodox rabbi’s going to question it. The Rabbinical Council of America is full of misogynistic jerks but no one will question them, except maybe the Jerusalem Rabbinite, and you don’t have to worry about that unless you’re moving to Israel.”

“Not in the plan,” Foggy said, looking a little bit lost.

The beis din was actually just three guys at a table in the library, with a (male) secretary. They looked at Foggy’s birth certificate, the certificate from his bris, asked Rosalind a few questions, and the rabbi all the way to the left said, “He should tovel in the mikvah without a bracha. Just to be certain.”

Marci only kind of understood what he said and Foggy clearly had no idea, but nobody said anything in front of the rabbis.

“You’re fine,” Rosalind said. But she was no Rabbinic scholar, so she probably couldn’t explain it either. “To the mikvah with them, just to be sure. No questions down the road. No questions for your kids to answer. Okay?” She did not wait for an answer. “You’ll call?”

“I’ll call,” Foggy said, giving no time for thought there. And, being Foggy, he meant it.

They sorted it out easily enough. Foggy had to ritually immerse himself (in front of a witness, because yay), but not say the blessing for conversion because he wasn’t a convert. They just wanted to make sure he was purified before he got married. Marci was obviously not invited or allowed to go to this fairly important life event, so Matt did.

“You don’t want to know what was in that water,” was what Matt said to Marci after, in an undertone. “I don’t think they change it that often. Also, they said I can’t be a witness on your marriage certificate.”

“Because you’re not Jewish. And blind. You have to be able to see the document you’re signing. With _your eyes_. Don’t tell me that’s totally unreasonable for a two-thousand-year-old law.”

Matt grimaced but didn’t answer.

They threw a conversion party at that disgusting bar Foggy and Matt loved near their office. Karen, who was back from another round of rehab, joined them, and apparently she wasn’t an alcoholic because she was the one who bought pitchers of beer. She didn’t let Juan have any – everyone agreed that Josie’s beer should not be his first drink, anyway – but he did get to play darts and managed not to blind anyone further than they might already be blinded. They didn’t invite Foggy’s family because well, that seemed a little insulting, and they didn’t invite Rosalind because it would not have been a party.

“Mazel tov!” said a totally stacked blond guy who was, apparently, the god of thunder, and Marci thought oh shit, we might have to actually do this.

“Told you I can get him,” Foggy said as he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “And guess what? He’s fluent in Yiddish.”

“Yiddish isn’t Hebrew, and what?”

“Uh, apparently he’s really good at languages because you know, he’s an alien, and he was on earth like, two hundred years ago. So he can converse with anyone who speaks old-timey Slavic Yiddish. And they have the same character set, so we’re good to go.”

“I speak many Midgardian languages!” Thor said triumphantly as he held out his arm and Juan hung from his bicep with two feet of the ground. “Why do people assume the royalty of Asgard would be so uncultured? You are very quick to assume things. I would be happy to share in your mating ceremony!”

Marci raised her martini glass in Josie’s direction to signal for a refill.

*************************

Marci had one last hurdle to climb in her apparent quest for matrimony. Unfortunately, that hurdle was Matt Murdock.

He'd always been polite to her, especially since she’d helped him with Juan's adoption, but remained cautiously at a distance otherwise. She never saw him, basically, unless he was with Foggy and/or Juan and had some reason for their paths to be crossing. So when he texted her that he wanted to meet after work for drinks, she knew what was up.

He passed on her first choice. "The FBI have the place bugged." Second choice: "The bartender cutting up limes behind the counter with his bare hands has hepatitis." Third choice: "Okay, but don't order a gin and tonic. It's bottom-level gin."

"You're weird," she said unapologetically at the fourth place, a place just rustic enough to be called hole-in-the-wall by tourists, and just touristy enough to be overpriced and pass health code inspections with flying colors. Matt tilted his head and gave her that half-smile that could be described as charming, though he'd never bothered to give her the full Murdock charm (probably because when they met, she was dating Foggy). She debated whether to be insulted by it, but whatever.

"That's all you have to say? I'm 'weird?'" he said after asking for a new clean glass from the annoyed waiter.

"Sometimes it's good to be succinct," she said, perfectly satisfied with her own glass, thank you very much. "If you're waiting for me to ask for your blessing to marry Foggy, it's not happening."

Matt chuckled. It was always so hard to tell what was genuine with him. "I didn't think you would. I was kind of surprised that Foggy asked your parents. Or that you let him."

"I was pissed that they expected it, but getting off to a good start with your future in-laws is not a terrible idea, so I signed off on it. Old people have a hard time with change. You'd know that if you had overbearing parents."

"I think my mom might be alive," Matt said, which came out of nowhere. "I don't know where she is, though. She left when I was too young to remember her."

"Please tell me any story you have goes uphill from here."

Matt crossed his arms. If he could stare, he would definitely be trying to size her up. "I used to think you didn't have] decent bone in your body."

"What changed that assumption?"

"Foggy doesn't like disingenuous people," he said. "And you asked him to convert, so you must have some loyalty to something other than yourself."

"Well, not all of us can be the Mother Theresa of Hell's Kitchen, but I do try. Also, based on her biography, we have about the same level of belief in G-d."

Matt made a choking noise as if he'd swallowed wrong, even though he hadn't touched his beer. "I'm the Devil of Hell's Kitchen."

There was an uncomfortable silence, like maybe he was expecting her to comically spit out her drink or something. Not at that price for a martini she wasn't. "Wait, the Daredevil guy?"

"Yes."

"The sub-Avenger my assistant has a crush on?"

"I'm more of a contractor. And I can't confirm the bit about your assistant."

"Jesus, she has a Twitter feed about you. And Power Man. And Hawkeye. You have to share the spotlight a little bit. And the pics are always ridiculously blurry."

"I don't spend much time picture-hunting on the internet," he said in his deadpan _don't you know I'm blind_ tone. "Do you have any follow-up questions?"

"No, it fills in a lot of holes." For example, why his knuckles were red, and probably why Foggy knew how to pull stitches. "So you fought some kind of ancient evil at Cape Cod?"

"Among other things."

"What was it like?"

She loved tripping Matt up. And he was so tripped up it was hilarious. "It was the worst thing I've ever smelled in my life. And that's saying something." He finally got his clean glass and poured his beer. "Are you going to turn me in?"

"Who would believe me? You're a blind guy," she said. "You are really blind, right?"

"Yes. And you only get to ask that question once. It's insulting."

"What color is my hair?"

He chewed on his lip, looking very insulted. "You bleach and then dye every one to two months. It's an expensive job and it's bad for your hair and your scalp, but you do it so often because you don't want your roots to show. So whatever color it is, it must be very different from your real color. If I had to guess, blond, because most people who bleach do it to go blond. But I could be wrong. All the hair dyes smell the same to me."

"Aren't you the little sleuth?" she said, not meanly. And in her heels, she was taller than him, but that was only when her hair was up. "It's blond, in case you were wondering."

"I don't really think of colors much anymore," he said and sounded like he was really admitting something, more so than the fact that he was a fucking vigilante who worked with the fucking Avengers and she'd helped this guy adopt a kid.

She supposed she had reason to be a little bitter. "Your suit looks stupid."

"So I have been told."

"I bet it's worse up close."

"Foggy says it is."

"And I have no idea how you've managed to be a reliable parent this long," she said. "That kid could be dead in an alley while you were off fighting sea monsters. Does that bother you?"

"Juan knows not to go into dark alleys," he said. "He's not an idiot." Matt leaned forward. "My dad was a boxer. That meant he was out most nights, training or at an actual fight. I was home with no supervision. I fed myself, did my homework, and went to bed. Compared to that, Juan is over supervised."

"Yeah, because you turned out to be a shining example of normalcy," she said back. "Are you training him to be your sidekick?"

"Juan isn't allowed to fight."

"But he has all those Tae Kwon Do trophies."

Matt squirmed. "He's allowed to fight the way normal kids fight. In scheduled competitions where everyone's covered in padding and the losers get participation trophies anyway. And nothing else."

"Yeah, I'm sure he's going to listen to you now that he's a teenager," she said. "For the record, I'm glad you didn't tell me, because if you had, I never would have signed off on you adopting him."

"That's fair."

"And I don't know why Foggy did. Probably because he doesn't know how to say no to you."

"There was also the fact that Juan was an orphan who'd been trafficked into this country in a shipping container. We weren't going to drop him off at the hospital and walk away. I don't know what you think of me, but you know that Foggy would never do that."

"I think you're batshit insane," she said. "But I've always thought that."

Matt shrugged. "I'd be lying if I said you were totally wrong."

"I read that Daredevil got his powers from capturing and containing demons from Hell," she explained, "but I'm not sure if I'm even supposed to believe in Hell, so there you go."

"The Wiki page is very inaccurate," he said. "It was toxic waste. And the papers gave me that name."

"So you don't have any demons in a reactor in your basement."

He grimaced. "No."

"And if something were to happen to you - "

"Foggy would get full custody. That includes if I go missing and am not found."

She put her martini down and signaled for another one. "Put it on his tab," she said to the waiter before turning back to Matt. " I'm only going to ask this once, and you'll answer it, and I'll never bring it up again. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Did the year that you were missing have to do with being Daredevil?"

"Sort of."

"Did you kill anyone?"

"You said one question," he said. "That's two."

But the way he'd frozen up, he definitely would have said yes. Or maybe not. That part of his life - and Foggy's life, by extension - was a dark pit that swallowed all light, and Marci had always stayed carefully away from it, out of respect and self-preservation. She wasn't about to change that now. It wasn't like she was marrying _Matt_.

"Any other major revelations you want to dump on me because Foggy didn't feel that he should have to say it himself?" But in response, Matt made a face like he'd swallowed a lemon, which could only mean there were so many. Marci added, "Not that I care."

"You're lying," he said. "I can tell when people are lying."

"Do lies smell or something?"

"Heartbeat," he said, and he was deadly serious, because of course he was.

Well, she'd signed up for this when she signed up with Foggy. "I bet two truths and a lie is not very fun with you."

"It's fun for me."

"Is that why you're so good at picking juries?"

"It's a team effort," Matt said. "I can't see race, and as embarrassed as I am to admit it, it's a component of jury selection."

"If you want to win at all costs."

"If you want to do what's best for your client," he replied, just as firmly. "Which means the most sympathetic jury. You need sight for some of that."

"So are your clients always innocent like you say they are?"

"You know I can't answer that."

"But you know."

"You also know it's irrelevant. Everyone deserves a good legal defense."

He was squirming, but just a little, and only because she knew that he did care if his clients were innocent, even if he was not technically supposed to. She'd heard enough arguments in law school between Matt and Foggy over that very fine but crucial point. It was also probably why their firm was always barely above water.

"Okay, Mr. Polygraph, let's do this," she said, setting down her second drink. "My real hair is red."

"Lie."

"I'm allergic to eggplant."

"Truth."

"I cheated on the bar exam."

"Lie."

"I cheated on Foggy in college."

"Lie."

"I'm giving you the finger right now for using superpowers in your legal career."

"Lie. But I would be able to tell, if you were."

"I'm _thinking_ about giving you the finger for using superpowers in your legal career."

"True. And I thought you would have some appreciation of a cutthroat lawyer trying to keep his practice going."

"Yeah, yeah, with a heart of gold, too. You're complicated, Murdock."

He smiled. "That's not the first time I've heard that."

"If you disappear again, and leave Foggy and me with Juan, we'll raise him, but first I'll track you down and kill you myself. Am I telling the truth?"

"Yes." So he understood where they stood. Good for him. "I think you would make a good mom."

"Lie," she said, and finished her drink.

"I don't lie unless I have to," Matt said. "I'm not saying I can imagine you barefoot and pregnant. I know that's not the only type of mom there is. I'm saying that ... if the worst were to happen to me, and you had to take Juan as a stepson, I think you would do a great job. I'm not worried about that."

"I'm glad I have your approval."

"This is for Juan, not Foggy. Foggy can make his own decisions. Juan is my son," he said, about ready to tear to pieces anyone who said otherwise. He always got weirdly possessive about Juan. "I'm trying to say I trust you with the most important person in my life. Just take the compliment."

She was being a little harsh. Getting Matt to admit anything private was usually like pulling teeth. "I'm a little defensive. I'm facing a jealous ex-husband who doesn't even know how creepy his glasses are but probably suspects from the way I smell."

"I'm not jealous."

"But if Foggy said he wanted to spend the rest of his life in a queerplatonic relationship with you, you wouldn't say no."

"That's irrelevant."

“I’m taking Foggy away from you.” She added, “Don’t deny it.”

Matt’s jaw clenched. He was looking for something to say, something that wouldn’t admit weakness, and not finding it. Finally, he choked out an answer. “It was never meant to be permanent.” He meant his marriage, of course. What went without saying was that he wanted it to be. All of that business about Matt not wanting to sign the papers. He would do without a church marriage. He might even do without sex, somehow, if it meant keeping Foggy. “I hope you have the same level of relationship that Foggy and I had. You’ll have a happy marriage. And I want both of you to be happy.”

That was not a lie.

“Thank you,” Marci said, strangely relieved that Matt had, in fact, blessed their union. “Is there anything else you need to drop on me because Foggy won’t?”

“No,” he said. “But you should really ask him about bending.”

*************************

“You have a superpower,” Marci said, because this was the last thing she needed today, really.

“Um, it’s not really ...” Foggy looked at the rock he was currently levitating a few inches above his hand. _Now_ she knew why he had a pet rock collection on his desk at work. “It’s _kinda_ that. It’s more trouble than it’s worth, actually. At least Matt gets to sort of almost fly.” He unfolded his fingers and the stone changed shape to closer match his outstretched hand. “I’m not going to be an Avenger, okay? I don’t use it to fight crime. I’m not on any superhero or vigilante networks. Only a couple people know about it.”

“Name them.”

“Matt, Juan, Matt’s teacher, Natasha – “

“Black Widow?”

“She’s not actually a spy anymore. I think. And whatever, I have stuff on her,” he said way too casually. “And Ant-Man. And Captain America. And whoever was at that afterparty at Stark’s. But half the people in there were benders so ... Yeah.”

“This isn’t a mutant thing?”

He shook his head. “I got it from a giant lion turtle, which is exactly what it sounds like. Which I _told you about_ when you picked us up from the airport after the trip to Japan.”

“I thought you were doing shrooms.”

“Trust me, being in the Spirit World is a lot like doing shrooms.” He finally put the rock down on the counter, still without physically touching it. Come to think of it, her counter was made of granite. Could he do something with that? “Look, it’s something that happened accidentally, and it’s not a big part of my life, and I don’t want that to change. I’m not going to dress up in green spandex and battle muggers in alleyways. That’s insane.”

“Matt does it,” she said.

“Yeah, and we both know Matt is a little insane,” he replied, which was true, and made her smile. “And he was doing that _before_ he was an airbender, so ... he’s just better at not getting hurt now.”

“He’s going to get himself killed.” Not that she was worried about Matt Murdock. That was not the case here.

Foggy shrugged. “I’ve been telling him that for years. He did cut back, but only for Juan. And sometimes the Avengers call him up for some crazy thing and he doesn’t say no, because the fate of the world or whatever. Except once, when we were in Jamaica and he couldn’t find a babysitter. And he usually doesn’t go out on Sundays because, you know, the L-rd’s day. Or, his lord. Not our lord. Who is worshipped on Saturdays,” he corrected more quickly than necessary. He really took those conversion classes seriously. “Matt is not going to stop being Matt. Give up on that dream right now, because it’s not going to happen.”

This sounded like a speech he had recited to himself many times. It wasn’t worth pushing him. She wouldn’t win, and Marci Stahl did not waste time with battles she couldn’t win. “Anything else to drop on me?”

“Uh ... no, actually. I mean, that’s all I can tell you. Some of Matt’s stuff is actually kinda private and he’ll tell you if he wants to.”

She bit her lip. “There’s a reason he wanted to adopt Juan. Specifically. He was nuts about it.”

Foggy looked sad. And defeated. “Yes, but don’t ask him about it, okay? It really isn’t your business. It has nothing to do with me and it changes nothing about your relationship with Juan or Matt. I know Matt’s our third wheel, but that doesn’t mean he’s actually _in_ our relationship. We’re _us_ , and he’s got his own things. I’m asking you to respect that.”

Foggy was always so reasonable. Even when he was being unreasonable, he made it _sound_ reasonable, and this wasn’t one of those times. “Fine. No more of Matt’s drama. Unless it directly affects us.”

“Yes.”

“Which means you, Foggy-bear. So I hear that you’re dead because Matt left you on some mystical werewolf-duck – “

“ – lion turtle – “

“I’m going to give him all the shit I want about it.”

“He wouldn’t do that. But if he did, you would be well within your rights to beat him to a pulp. Verbally. He’s a ninja. He could take you. He took on a giant plant monster the size of my building last week.”

“Your office is in a small building,” she pointed out. “We’ll see.”

*************************

Over the next few months, Marci saw way more of her parents than she wanted to see. Fortunately she had a job to escape to, and her fiance’s opinions on the wedding décor were decidedly neutral, and so were his parents, so that knocked out a lot of trouble spots. Foggy did go to see the reception hall, and helped pick out invitations, and sometimes he would walk into a planning meeting beaming, and she knew he was about to spill some obscure piece of Jewish legal trivia that she half-remembered from Hebrew school. “Hey, did you know that people who race pigeons can’t serve as witnesses in court?”

“You’re _already_ a lawyer,” she reminded him. “And if you want to be a rabbi, you’re going to have to make your peace with giving up bacon.”

“They make kosher bacon now! It’s made with pastrami or veal. The good stuff is, anyway. I read about it on the internet!”

“Of course you did,” she said. “And we’re all proud of you. Aren’t we, Mom?”

Her mom, who was studying the variations on invitation fonts with the intensity one would give cancer screening results, didn’t even look up. “The pastrami kind is the best one.”

“Mom, you’re not helping.”

“And veal is so expensive. And they say they treat the baby cows nicer because of kashrut, but you know they don’t.”

“ _Mom_.”

“Which one of these do you like best?” Her mother held up a sheet of fonts that Foggy could not possible see from that distance.

“Uh, whichever one Marci likes best?”

“See? You trained him well,” her mother said with a nudge to her shoulder, and Marci googled “Jewish elopement” for the dozenth time.

*************************

Foggy had his bachelor party and Marci assumed it was pretty tame, because Foggy didn’t have the heart to cheat on her, Matt couldn’t possible know any strip clubs, and Juan was there for at least part of the time. It also involved some Avengers, so she supposed their venue was possibly destroyed, but she didn’t hear about any big explosions in New York so that sounded good. She went to Vegas with her friends and got way too many sketchy offers from guys on bachelor party weekends to come up to their rooms for private parties, but it came with the territory, and also she wasn’t buying her own drinks, so that was good.

“I never thought you would get married!” her friend Selena said after too much pre-game vodka in the hotel suit. “And to a guy with a kid!”

“The kid’s _adorable_ ,” she said. “And whatever, I didn’t have to destroy my vagina pushing him out, so that’s a win.”

“You’re gonna be a great stepmom!” said her stupid friend Shelli (with an I, like her) that she was pretty sure she only still liked because they’d gone to summer camp together and also had the same iPhone cases. But she said it with conviction, and Marci appreciated that. She appreciated honestly, as it was so rare in her professional life, and her personal life was a minefield after someone removed all the warning signs. “And best mom, too!”

“Partner first,” she insisted. “Partner, then mom. So if Rosalind Sharpe wants a grandkid, she’d better give me a promotion!”

*************************

Rosalind Sharpe was, in the end, invited to the wedding. Foggy wanted to do it, and Marci was hardly going to stand in the way of that relationship, if it was something Foggy wanted. When he attached himself to people, he didn’t let go. It was one of the reasons she was marrying him.

(And forging a positive relationship with your birthmother-in-law wasn’t a terrible idea for her, either.)

The Nelsons were cool about the whole Judaism thing, as small a role as it actually played in the wedding. Her rabbi did the ketubah signing and she managed to wrangle two Jewish male guests to sign as witnesses, and Thor put on a good show of not totally being a Norse god who was also a wet Aryan dream of a man, though legally they were married by the rabbi. Best to have all of their legal ducks in a row. He wasn’t the only Avenger there, but they told anyone who asked that they’d hired a cheap Captain America impersonator who was too lazy to even wear his costume, but they were doing him a solid since he helped them move a couch, and that seemed to do the trick. Lawyers were good at dodging questions. No aliens attacked, no scientific-experiments-gone-wrong trampled the dance floor, and she overheard Sam Wilson grumbling about losing a bet to Clint Barton about swarms of ninjas doing something or other. She was pretty sure that Best Man Matt was actively trying _not_ to hook up with her Maid of Honor, who was doing the opposite, so good for him, but she didn’t plan to ask any follow-up questions when she and Foggy returned from their honeymoon.

There was one custom that was too religious to be in a Jewish wedding of her level of observance that they did decide to put back in, and that was the Yichud room – the time immediately after the ceremony where they went into a room, locked the door, and were alone together for the first time as husband and wife before they had to face the crowds again. When she was a little kid learning about life cycle events she thought that was wear the couple “did it,” but the rabbi carefully explained to her that there was absolutely no way that a modern bride could remove and then put a wedding dress back on in twenty minutes, and it was more about getting a chance to use the bathroom and snack.

“How does it feel to be Mr. Stahl?” she said, basically sunk into the couch from exhaustion. Also, her dress itched.

“You know I can’t do that. Nelson and Murdock isn’t the kind of law firm that can afford to change a nameplate. It’s bolted in.”

“You can pull it out with your magic.”

“Stone. Not metal. And it’s not magic,” he said, but she giggled. “Okay, it’s totally magic. But don’t tell anyone I said that.” He smiled. “You’ve never been more beautiful than you are today.”

“I think you have to say that whenever I ask how I look if you want to stay married.”

“Trust me, one divorce was enough. You’re stuck with me. I’ll say whatever I have to say to make it happen.”

“Tell Rosalind to make me partner.”

“I don’t think I have to tell her that. That seems like an unnecessary step. But if she drinks as heavily as my parents are drinking right now, you could be partner by morning.” He took her hand; it felt so strange when their two rings clinked together. “But you’ll get there on your own steam. That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

“When I was five, I wanted to be a princess.”

“I’m sure Steven Strange can pull us into some alternate reality where you are. But we might also become frogs or something.”

She kissed him hard, and tasted the cologne and the aftershave and the breath mints and everything about him that was Foggy and said, “This universe is just fine.”

 

The End 


End file.
